A social worker is baffled by a mother-daughter team drowning in festering rubbish, unhealthy smells in their dilapidated home, and too many secrets that keep them sick.

In 1924 the wife of a Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American. Her supernatural...