In 1917, Elizabeth defies her wealthy parents by running off and marrying Horace Robedaux, a young man of humble prospects. Her parents have not spoken to her since - even though the couple lives in a rooming house nearby, they are struggling financially, and she is pregnant.
When a young woman's skeletal remains turn up on a Massachusetts beach, Barnstable cop Peter Moralas teams with Boston police and uses forensics, with the help of a Harvard professor, to determine the woman's identity, how she died, and who killed her.