Middle aged, unhappily married, and haunted by a tragedy from her past, Alice has resigned herself to an unremarkable existence. Then she meets June—a suspiciously pale flapper only she can see, a young woman who claims to have died and not remember the circumstances of her life or death.

Determined to solve the mystery of her ghostly new friend, Alice allows herself to experience a new side of Galveston Island: speakeasies, jazz, new fashions for women, more permissive social mores, and an undercurrent of danger that hits closer to home than she would have expected. Despite Prohibition, or perhaps as a reaction to it, Islanders are embracing the new era with gusto, fueled by a vibrant music scene and an abundance of delicious cocktails.

But beyond the façade of jazz, speakeasies, and liquor, the Island carries fresh memories of death and destruction. Merely two decades ago, the Great Storm of 1900 killed almost five thousand of its inhabitants and put an end to its Golden Age. Alice herself drags along more ghosts than just June, but she is as much in denial about it as she is blind to some of the more sinister aspects of the Prohibition era, or the lies of omission in her own family relationships.

As she comes closer to finding out the truth about June, Alice learns that her otherworldly acquaintance has a secret agenda that will force her into the orbit of rum runners, psychics, federal agents, and peddlers of potentially poisonous bathtub gin. More importantly, her adventures with June will present her with a choice between confronting her past or keeping it buried.

Will she be able to rise from her own ashes like the Island itself? And is such a rebirth in the wake of tragedy truly possible, or merely an illusion?