The Night Ocean

Marina Willett has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, and in particular with the events of the summer of 1933, when the reclusive Lovecraft lived for two months with a young fan named Robert Barlow and his family in central Florida. Lovecraft was forty-three that summer, and Barlow was sixteen. What were the two of them up to, and what did they feel for each other? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police call it a suicide, but Marina doesn't believe them. Heartbroken, she follows her missing husband's trail to learn the truth.

Moving across the decades and along the length of the continent, from a remote Ontario town, through New York and Lovecraft's native Providence, to Mexico City, The Night Ocean is a historical tour de force about love and deception; it's about the way stories earn our trust, and betray it.