When John Delano is asked by the sister of Orville MacDurmot to investigate his violent death and the accusations of murder that haunted his final days, Delano embarks on a journey that will pull him deep into Miramichi's shadowy history and the pasts of those who conspired against him. Bullied as a child for his meagre upbringing and blindness in one eye, Orville broke from his humble roots to become an internationally renowned archeologist, a position those along the Miramichi treat with both pride and resentment. Not one to suffer fools gladly, Orville finds himself progressively at odds with the region's elite, who wish to use his eminence for their own gains and enlist him for their political causes. As resentments old and new fester, suspicion grows and a book titled Darkness increasingly seems the origin of a crime unlike anything the Miramichi has witnessed before, Orville finds his reputation--and his life--in danger. When the remains of a young woman and man are discovered on a rugged shoreline where Orville has been working on an archeological dig, his enemies finally see their opportunity to destroy him.