The Stepford Wives meets Stephen King in this debut mystery: a sleepy New England beach town is wrecked by a hurricane that reveals an unthinkable 30-year-old secret. When a catastrophic hurricane devastates Stone Cove Island, a serene New England resort community, everyone pulls together to rebuild. Seventeen-year-old Eliza Elliot volunteers to clean out the island's iconic lighthouse and stumbles upon a secret in the wreckage: a handwritten, anonymous confession to a twenty-five-year-old crime.
Bess Linsky's unsolved murder has long haunted the island, and the letter turns the town inside out. Everyone who knew Bess is suddenly a suspect. Soon Eliza finds herself in the throes of an investigation she never wanted. As Stone Cove Island fights to recover from disaster, Eliza plunges the locals back into a nightmare they believed was long buried.