Deanna Aynsworth's older brother, Matthew, stares at a seventeenth-century painting of a sea captain. The captain looks just like him. Then, before her eyes, Matthew vanishes without a trace. A year later, still struggling with the disappearance of her brother, 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 first-hand the uncanny truth of what really happened to her brother.