It's the second-to-last day of archaeological field school - the students are working on a site of prehistoric graves on Dewees, a barrier island north of Charleston, South Carolina, when a much more recent burial is uncovered. The skeleton is articulated, the bone fresh and the vertebrae still connected by soft-tissue - it's a case forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan has to take. But her investigations soon have her in too deep, her entire view of humanity challenged, and the further she probes, the more she seems to be putting herself in danger