A Testament to the Power of Love and Memory

October 2017, north of Boston. The body of a 60-year-old drug addict and former prostitute is pulled from the Shawsheen River. The only person questioned is a former lover from decades before, now an aging English professor at a nearby college. The death is ruled accidental.

August 1984, Atlantic City. Ten casinos are taking in $5 million a day; the Bruno crime family, following a deadly mob war, is in control of the city’s rackets: loan-sharking, protection, fight-fixing, high-end prostitution. Among its most prized assets is a 28-year-old, $1,000-a-night escort named Sarah—beautiful and spirited, but deeply guarded, tethered to her mob bosses by an unknowable  secret.

Harry Hopper, a local news reporter known for his deep digs into the resort’s darkest corners, comes to know her and is soon obsessed with the shadows she casts, then with Sarah herself. The two become lovers.

But the secrets don’t yield. And the dangers are too great. In the spring of 1987, Sarah disappears.

For Harry, the memories live on as a torment. There are years of drifting and drinking, until finally he lands at that college outside Boston. More years pass. One day an email arrives in his inbox. Sarah needs help.

So begins a second chapter. But even now there are secrets, and likely no good ending—though only one of them seems to know it.