The year is 1929 and Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Willa Cather and her partner Edith Lewis are summering on Grand Manan, an island in the Bay of Fundy. In their cottage’s sparsely-furnished attic room, Cather is at work writing “Shadows on the Rock,” her tenth novel. Relaxing after a hectic winter of working at a New York City ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, Edith is painting watercolors from the cliffs hundred feet above the rising tides of Whale Cove. Out of the corner of her eye, Edith sees a body plunge from the edge of a cliff to the rocks below…

Solving the mystery, first-time novelist Sue Hallgarth’s intimate view of village politics and the goings-on of two women’s communities long lost to history is also a suspenseful and surprising crime novel. Hallgarth draws the reader into a unique retreat, stimulating conversations about literature and art, and an inside glimpse of the lives of a great American novelist and her talented life partner.