On a remote Spanish island near the African coast, a young scientist, Epiphany Jerome, is looking for a rare beetle. Instead, she finds a body on an empty beach with a knife sticking out from its back. It's not just another tourist. It's the daughter of Epiphany's landlady and the single mother of an 11-year old girl devoted to Epiphany's small dog, Mostly. As a forensic entomologist trained in the language of insects, Epiphany can tell the police more about the baffling murder than, apparently, they care to know. Epiphany, a Mexican American married to an Italian, still struggles with her Catholic upbringing and is drawn deeper into the secrets of the small harbor town, where traditional values are eroding under the pressures of tourism and Spain's growing economic crisis. A second body turns up: a beautiful hooker from Berlin that Epiphany's husband knows just a little too well. The Medical Examiner requests the entomologist's expertise once more, and this time, the police are very interested in what she has to say. But Epiphany has gone off alone into the island's rugged interior tracking nature's clues, unaware that her life is about to be irrevocably changed.