This autumn, Dr. Earl Headley is eagerly demonstrating what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis, yet not far from where he is working, the disease threatens to claim yet another life: a young woman named Winifred is seriously ill. Winifred's mother and younger sister Trixie are devastated. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away," she interprets the doctor's words literally. Thinking over what she has heard, she determines to do everything possible to save her sister.
—Snow Leopard