Best-selling author Sam Bayer is stuck. Burned out from his third divorce, bored with the formulaic rut his writing has fallen into, and unable to deliver the manuscript for which he has been paid a stratospheric advance, he is desperate for inspiration. But a chance visit to his hometown of Crane's View, New York, sparks his imagination. Soon he immerses himself in an unsolved case of murder that took place when he was a teenager - Sam himself had discovered the body of the victim, a beautiful and wild teenage girl named Pauline.

Miranda Romanac is a successful 30-something woman in today's modern world, yet she feels alone and adrift on the sea of her life. At her high school reunion she makes a shattering discovery that further undermines her already shaky sense of who she is and where she is going. When she meets the remarkable Hugh Oakley, her life takes a 180-degree turn for the better - but at what price?