Author Jeremy Woods has found perfect isolation, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he can write in peace--until a strange, strikingly beautiful girl crashes into his cottage, and his life. Showing up at his door during the worst blizzard of recent history, the girl is half-frozen from exposure, with dangerously frostbitten fingers and toes. The roads down into town are too inundated with snow to seek medical care for her--Jeremy's cottage rests 8000 feet high at the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with no other shelter for miles. How could the girl have survived the journey on foot?
At first, Jeremy is intrigued; the girl displays remarkable artistic talent, able to create stunning sketches with almost photographic detail. Her work takes on an eerie quality, however, matching that of Jeremy's first love, Priscilla--a hauntingly original artist murdered at the tender age of eighteen--to the most minute detail. Even more troubling is Jeremy's growing attraction to his guest, whose name he learns is Sarah. As they grow close and Sarah starts painting, Jeremy realizes something is terribly wrong--Sarah's portraits, while brilliant, include disturbing portrayals of Priscilla's abduction and homicide.
A haunting, evocative love story, Cary Grossman's fourth work of speculative fiction depicts two damaged people struggling with the ghosts of their past in the hope of keeping the comfort they have found in one another.