Growing up on a secluded island off the coast of Maine and raised by the island's insular priest, Hannah Newcombe has led a sheltered life. She has plans to attend a prestigious boarding school on the mainland at the summer's end but finds her world upended with the sudden disappearance of a classmate, swallowed by the sea. Hannah's quiet obsession with the missing boy grows, leading to haunting dreams and visions. To pacify them, she attempts to fill the missing boy's role as a stern-man on his father's lobster boat. Now, torn between her commitment to the man who raised her and the man she hopes to save, Hannah is confronted with questions of her own identity for the first time.