It's November in Massachusetts. Leo Coffin is making a birthday cake for his wife, Liv, due home soon from a trip to Norway, when a stranger comes to the door claiming to be Liv's half-brother, Morten. Too polite to make the stranger wait until Liv is home before letting him in, Leo unleashes a troubling, fascinating force into his quiet life.When Liv returns, unable to separate fact from fiction, Leo is forced to live with mystery upon mystery, as well as a secret he's been keeping himself. Can his marriage survive the fiction? Can it survive the truth?