Alex and Kate Sheppard have found their dream house, nestled deep in the Wiltshire countryside and surrounded by a two-acre walled garden. Soon after moving in, they make an impossibly exciting discovery - they find a blue rosebush flourishing in the garden. But as word of the discovery leaks out, their peaceful existence is replaced by a world of coded journals, genetic experiments, cold-blooded greed, and, ultimately, murder.

Hidden within the derelict gardens of abandoned Wickersham Priory, a deadly secret is waiting. But when an unsuspecting young Californian named Jamie Gibson finds herself the new owner of the estate, through a surprise bequest from a total stranger---the secret begins to stir.            Jamie, fired with enthusiasm to restore the gardens to their 1930s glory, seeks the help of Lawrence Kingston, a retired professor of botany, eccentric bon viveur, and amateur sleuth. Lawrence soon unearths an old chapel, which leads to an ancient Healing Well, which in turn yields a human skeleton. And as the police pursue their inquiries, Kingston begins his own investigation---following a baffling trail of clues that wind down through the centuries, from the battlegrounds of World War II to the depths of the Middle Ages.            It is a trail marked by misadventure, revenge, compassion, and murder when finally Kingston unlocks the secret of Wickersham Priory, he and Jamie must confront a reckoning that neither of them could have ever imagined.            As with the highly acclaimed The Blue Rose, Eglin brings his botanical and literary skill to this new mystery. 

After a battle between two members of an heirloom rose society which results in a fiery accident that disfigures one of the combatants, Regan Culver tries to intervene but must first discover the truth about another similar incident twenty-five years in the past