When Houston reporter Lucy Resnick cashes in her retirement to get her grandmother’s farm in Buttercup, Texas, she’s looking forward to a straightforward life like a homesteader. But Lucy offers barely finished adding her first batch of Killer Dewberry Jam when an oil-exploration truck rolls up to the farm and announces plans to displace her broccoli patch with an essential oil derrick. Two days afterwards, Nettie Kocurek, the girl who ordered the drilling, turns up dead on the Founders’ Day Festival having a bratwurst skewer through her heart and one of Lucy’s jam jars beside her…and the sheriff fingers Lucy as the prime suspect.

Horrified, Lucy begins to speak to Nettie’s neighbors, but the more she reaches understand the townspeople, the more she realizes she’s not the only person who acquired a beef with Nettie. Can she clear her name, or will her dream life become a nightmare?