The Red Rose Girls --Violet Oakley, Jessie Willcox Smith, and Elizabeth Shippen Green--were t the only female artists to live at Cogslea. Caitlin, an artist, is housesitting at Cogslea when she finds herself on a quest to unlock secrets from the past. Eager to help in the adventure are Toby, an imaginative twelve year old; Maggie, the cleaning woman who talks to ghosts; and Caitlin's African wild dog, Malindi, who dreams in parables. But Caitlin will tell one, t even her husband, Sam, of the radical method she will use to step through the portal of time to solve a three hundred year old mystery.