The fate of the village lay in the hands of a stranger in whom the
townspeople learned to distrust. The years taught them complacency,
growing comfortable in the wake of an evil curse. The stranger saw
that he was needed to enlighten the people. but no one trusted him
once they believed they were deceived.
Madeleine, a beautiful young farm girl, finds her chance to escape the
throes of the village slipping away because of the demands of her
ailing father and the lack of support from her two tenebrous sisters.
And in the shadows lay a sinister being capable of destroying her life
and sapping out what remained of the life of her ailing father.
Madeleine still believed in the stranger until she was tested.
Even though her decision conflicted with the villagers, she wound up
learning how to manage her father's impending end all alone.
She also learned to regret squandering her relationship with the
stranger when she realized how much she needed his support at her
father's funeral. She also knew she made a grave error that might
be irreparable. Now she will have to face her mounting turmoil alone
and deal with the gravest perils. She grew so stricken with grief
that she didn't know how to behave or where she could derive the
strength to face the calamity of her deb ilitating concerns and her
repressive loneliness. her father had been the key to her strength
and now she need to find new strength within herself, which baffled
her because there was no one to reassure her that she in fact
possessed it. It appeared to her that her father had taken that key
with him to his grave. And, without the stranger, she faced yet
another, horrible dilemma she never expected to ensue.