Just as her journalism career in the city is taking off, Piper Greene returns to her tiny New England hometown to care for her beloved aunt, Gladys. She takes a job at the Exeter Independent, where her days are filled with stories of church bazaars, runaway turkeys, and news from the garden club. Piper assumes her assignment to cover the American Independence Festival, honoring her town’s role in the Revolutionary War, is just another mundane event. But when a body dressed in a Red Coat soldier jacket is hanged from the top of the historic Town Hall, Piper finds herself in the middle of a murder. The victim is her news editor, Charlotte Campbell, and there is no shortage of people who would be glad to see her dead. Suspicion quickly lands on the paper’s photographer, who was fired the day before, but Piper cannot believe he is capable of murder. With the help of her high school crush, now a detective, her best friend at the bakery, and the town historian, Piper sets out to prove her friend’s innocence. But as she persists, she learns that unearthing small-town secrets is harder than she thought—and that some parts of local history can be deadly.