Faith Fairchild is momentarily shocked to find her husband, the Reverend Thomas Fairchild, embracing Lora Deane - and relieved to discover the distraught nursery school teacher is merely seeking solace and advice. Lora has been receiving threatening phone calls. And she's not the only resident of tiny Aleford, Massachusetts, who is being terrorized. Ever since local environmentalists have begun protesting the proposed housing development that will destroy Beecher's Bog, the more vocal opponents have become targets of a vicious campaign of intimidation-which is more than enough reason for Faith to launch into some clandestine sleuthing. But when a body turns up in the charred ruins of a very suspicious house fire, Faith is suddenly investigating a murder - and in serious danger of getting bogged down in a very lethal mess indeed! The seventh mystery in the Agatha Award-winning series featuring the irrepressible parson's wife/sleuth Faith Fairchild. In the midst of Aleford's annual Patriot's Day celebration, a woman's corpse is discovered in an unfinished house that has been burned to the ground by an arsonist. Faith finds herself investigating the murder--and being stalked herself.