Reduced to poverty after the Civil War, seventeen-year-old Mattie Campbell and her family struggle to survive in the ruined city of Charleston, South Carolina. When her father inherits land in the nearby countryside, the Campbells move there to farm it, though with little hope of ever regaining their former prosperity-until the day a stranger arrives and unexpectedly makes Mr. Campbell an offer that is both alluring and troubling. Learning that the farm is haunted by a ghost dressed in gray, young Mattie is skeptical, but she begins to believe when she sees it one night with her own eyes. Little does she suspect that this mysterious phantom holds the key to her family’s future, and that a deadly encounter with the stranger will reveal all its secrets.