Deanna Aynsworth's older brother, Matthew, finds himself staring at a seventeenth-century painting of a sea captain who looks just like him. Then, before Deanna's eyes, Matthew vanishes without a trace. A year later, still struggling with the fact that her brother has gone missing, Deanna decides to get away for the summer. She and her boyfriend, Justin, rent a room in a B&B, near Cacouna village. They discover a seventeenth-century diary by Wasaweg, a young Mi'gmaq woman, who fell in love with a shipwrecked Frenchman in New France. She and Matthieu lived on Cacouna Island-until the day he, too, mysteriously disappeared. As Deanna reads Wasaweg's journal, she finds consolation in the young Mi'gmaq woman's perceptions and expression. Deanna also learns firsthand the uncanny truth of what really happened to her brother. Burgess has been compared to Diana Gabaldon for her spell-binding time travel novels.