When Collin Severide encounters a Milwaukee bar full of sailors drinking, playing cards, and telling tall sea tails, he is reminded that his boss, the editor of the newspaper Collin writes for, has been pressuring him to write a Pulitzer Prize novel. Is the inspiration for his story there among these sailors? Or, does it come later with the invitation to join the crew on a US Coast Guard vessel on a cruise to Northern Wisconsin.
Upon arrival to the small lakefront town, however, he finds that Bar Harbor, during the ten years since he was last there, has been diminished to a community lacking the charm it once had, and the residents who remain are not as friendly as he remembered. A mysterious condition surrounds the town, and Collin is determined to discover its origin. Perhaps his Pulitzer Prize story is lurking in the shadows of Bar Harbor.