The trouble began with a blue suitcase, a jar of homemade strawberry jam, and an argument about whether anyone actually needed a paper map anymore. Seventy-eight-year-old Eleanor Bennett had spread a road map across the kitchen table, much to the amusement of her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Sophie, who insisted that GPS had made such things obsolete. "We have GPS, Grandma," Sophie announced, watching her grandmother trace a route with one finger. Eleanor adjusted her glasses and informed her that she had a perfectly good sense of direction. Sophie immediately reminded her of the previous Christmas, when she'd managed to get lost on the way to the grocery store and ended up at a llama farm.

There were two things everyone in the little town of Willow Creek seemed to agree on. The first was that nothing much ever happened there. The second was that if you wanted something badly enough, you had better figure out how to get it yourself. Willow Creek had once been a bustling place, with busy shops, a thriving lumber mill, and a Main Street where people gathered on Saturday afternoons. But the mill had closed years earlier, taking hundreds of jobs with it. Storefronts stood empty, houses needed repairs, and families had learned to stretch every dollar until it practically begged for mercy.