Dorie Hudson comes to Daelin, in northeast Georgia, to be the Lifestyles Editor of the Daelin Gazette. Ross MacAvoy is the local nursery owner who has, until this year, been contracted by the city to kill the kudzu outside of town and sends Dorie into the kudzu to find out why. She becomes an investigative journalist when she discovers a body in the kudzu . Dorie and Ross fall in love while searching the town folks, many of whom are like the kudzu, beautiful on the outside, but dead and full of secrets on the inside.