Seattle. The Emerald City. The place where Sam Collier lived for the first four years of his life - forgotten years - and where he has vowed never to return. Ian Collier, the father who abandoned him, lives in the city where Mount Rainier shimmers majestically in the distance. Sam has been a restless wanderer for years. But now he's found a place to call home, an apple orchard in a small town in Oregon. His quiet life is good - and he's even welcomed a new puppy - until he learns that Ian Collier has died. Sam has no reason to go to Seattle in the aftermath of Ian's death, but something compels him to. Is it the lovely haunted doctor - Kathleen Cahill - who loved the man he loathed? Or are there truths to be discovered, secrets hidden in those forgotten years, transcendent bonds of love, of fatherhood, that can never be shattered?