Seven-year-old Autumn Backman has a gift: she can communicate telepathically with others. Not everyone, mind you, but with a select few with whom she shares a special kinship. When Autumn and her mother, Joanna, take her father's ashes to be buried in the family plot in Brickers Bowl, Georgia, she witnesses a horrifying sight: her grandmother and two uncles, burying a pile of dead bodies in the middle of the night.