Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island’s small, close-knit community. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together was once all she needed. But now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out. One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael. Yet her careful illusion suddenly begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain. Her choices ripple through generations, across continents and into the depths of the sea.