Reclusive and controversial author Bruce Cogburn is drawn out of hiding by an obsessive fan, forcing the novelist to confront a past that he thought he could escape, and to account for events set in motion by his bestseller decades earlier. Cogburn's search for who is behind the manipulation and mental torment he encounters leads to an emotional roller-coaster ride full of fear and danger, where things are not always as clear as they seem to be, and where past deeds can have dire consequences.

In 1914, just after of Franz Ferdinand's assassination that eventually caused World War I, a steamship approaches a desolate island on the edge of the Antarctic Circle, where a young nameless man is poised to take the post of weather observer, to live in solitude at the ends of the earth for an entire year until the arrival of his replacement. For the next twelve months, his entire world will consist of a deserted cabin, the surrounding sea, and dangerous strange beings that he discovers are sharing the island.