It was summer in the mountains when five small children vanished from their nursery school picnic. The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air.
Three and a half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned by their abductor... one by one. All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland.

The other four children say Ivy is dead.S peculation grows that the kidnappings were revenge for an offender that Detective Wakeland put in jail years before. She engages in a battle of wits between herself, the kidnapper and the cold, vast expanse of mountains in between.