Thomas Wade Duncan lost a leg.
A casualty of the bloody Civil War Battle of Antietam, he wants nothing more than to drift into the comfortably numb embrace of his chosen medicine—forgetting his life before the conflict and the one he’d planned with his fiancée for the aftermath.
Instead, the former schoolteacher, stumbles through the seedy margins of a fraying nation—fading in and out of consciousness and finding himself somehow marooned on a stark, grey New England island at the onset of winter.
Detoxing under the care of Milly, one of the island’s mysterious community of women, his feverish dreams, hazy recollections, and once hoped for future become frustratingly indistinguishable.
While struggling with his own demons and tenuous sobriety, Thomas uncovers the sinister secrets of Black Ledge Cove, its elderly matriarch, and the obsession with its odd library—believing he has discovered a way to find peace by tapping into that powerful darkness.