Jerome is a young earth-artist spending a few months on an island in Lake Ontario. But his idyll is shattered when he discovers a man frozen in the ice near the shore. One year later Sylvia, the dead man's lover, appears at his studio driven by the need to recount her story to the stranger who discovered him. A tender and haunting story unfolds which stretches long and wide, a story that begins with Sylvia's childhood and mysterious illness and ends with her lover's tragic death. This deeply evocative and romantic novel is about the fragility of love and memory, and the redemptive power of stories.