As a professional storyteller, Maureen Nash can't help but see the narrative cues woven through her life. Like the series of letters addressed to her late husband from a stranger--the proprietor of The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. The store is famous with shell collectors, but it's the cryptic letters from Allen Withrow, the shop's owner, that convince Maureen to travel to the small coastal town in the middle...