In November of 1949, Richard MacEwan, a well-established lawyer in St. Paul, Minnesota, loses his brother James in what seems to have been a hunting accident. As he seeks to understand the events of the day his brother died, Richard finds the calm surface of his life disturbed when secrets kept by the women in his family begin to emerge.

Among his bachelor brother's papers, Richard discovers a letter from his wife, Sarah, that hints at an infidelity. Shaken and confused, he finds himself tempted by an attractive woman who had known his brother. And when Richard's daughter, Anna, vulnerable after her recent divorce, becomes involved with a married man, Charles Norden, her affair changes her life and shakes the very foundation of the MacEwan family.

The lives of these four characters - and the troubling legacy of James - are rendered in luminous detail and quietly breathtaking prose. A first novel that is "old-fashioned" in the most satisfying ways, In the Deep Midwinter presents a family and a world in crisis, a transformation as mysterious as winter becoming spring.