The rural town of Balaclava greets Groundhog Day as an excuse for one last cold-weather fling. The students and faculty of the local agricultural college drink cocoa, throw snowballs, and when the temperature allows, ice skate. But Oozak's Pond is not quite frozen this year, and as the celebrations reach their peak, the students see someone bobbing through the ice. Long past help, the drowning victim is badly decomposed and dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat with a heavy rock in each pocket.

First on the scene is Peter Shandy, horticulturalist and--when the college requires it--detective. But solving this nineteenth-century murder mystery will take more than Shandy's knack for growing rutabagas. Relying on his wife's expertise in local history, the professor dives headfirst into a gilded-age whodunit that cloaks secrets potent enough to kill.