Readers across the world are in love with author Sally Carmichael's series of romance novels that chronicle the epic love story between a human girl and a merman. But no one knows that Sally Carmichael is really Simon Hayes, a bitter, serious novelist - and Simon would like to keep it that way. When he is forced to meet a movie star about the movie adaptation, his life of anonymity starts to crumble.

When a job opportunity opens up for newlywed Grant Himmel, he moves with his wife Christie out to the countryside in Courtland, Virginia. However, Christie finds life in her new house to be unsettling. The area has a history of violence and it is where the exile of the Cheroenhaka Native Americans took place; no one in the area talks about the exile however. After several strange encounters, Christie believes that the house she is living in is haunted; nobody believes her however. Then, when Christie discovers the truth behind what is really going on, she finds that she is already trapped in her house.