Village farmers Jamie and Sue Blackstone's joy over finding their paralyzed daughter able to walk again after being taken to 'the healer', a tree in Wetherton woods is short lived when an excavation to determine the tree's integrity yields the remains of young Kittie, who disappeared more than forty years ago from a children's home. Genetic scientist Dr. Stephen Weston claims he can explain the pseudo-miracle, but must resort to dubious methods to gather proof, and suspects forgery by his bribed suppliers. Vicar Leonard Tibbings's recently assigned chaplain in charge of 'properly promoting the angles tree miracle', is also murdered there. Dalziel and Pascoe track down Leonard Tibbings' gruesome past as manager of the same home till it burned down suspiciously: systematic abuse involving splitting up siblings, including identical twins, and unpaid child labor on farmland belonging to the church. As Pascoe attempts to locate another missing girl, Dalziel is tied up when he bumps into his estranged, widowed sister Harriet Clifford nearby, only to discover that she is dying of cancer and that he has a brother who was discretely 'given away'.
—KGF Vissers