Violet Waverly gets a phone call from her Grandma Daisy that she was dying. When Amanda gets there, she finds Grandma Daisy is perfectly healthy.
This is a ploy to bring Violet back to Cascade Springs. Grandma Daisy wants her to take care of the big Burch Tree that grows in the middle of the Magical Bookstore.
Violet doesn't want to stay. Years ago, her best friend died and the police claimed she killed herself. She was not charged. Right after graduating, Violet left Cascade Springs saying she would never return.
While staying at Grandma's Violet finds the body of Daily's friend, dead and the police take Daisy to jail for questioning. Violet feels like she died years ago.
Violet tried to find the killer. On the way home from the bookstore, someone tried to run her down. She was riding her bike. Police Chief Rainwater comes to see what the noise was. Violet told him she fell off her bike. He didn't believe her. So she told him what really happened.
Violet learned the dead man was once a smuggler but changed to a man everyone liked. Daisy's friend Benedict drove a carriage, taking people around to see Niagara Falls.
There was a book that kept turning up. A volume of Emily Dickinson's poems, and always opened to the same poem;
"Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; the Carriage held but just Ourselves, and Immortality."
During the concert, Violet followed Shane to the carriage house, but she lost sight of him. Violet started back to the concert, but was attacked. Only he hissed to keep her nose out of police business.
Once again, Rainwater found her just after the attack. He saw she as hurt and she told him she thought it was Shane.
Once again Violet was almost killed when she went to the carriage house. She was following an idea. While there, she was confronted by Carly (real name Karen Wolcott) with a gun. She said she killed Benedict.
When they (Adam Wolcott) came into the barn, Carly misstopped and fell. She died from the fall.
The police arrived to see Carly fall. Another man arrived and it was Shane. He was an FBI agent seeing about the smuggler. Chief Rainwater didn't know about Shane, whose real name is Agent John Marks.
Violet decided to stay a while to care for the Magical Tree and help Grandma Daisy.