The night Clay Lockhart’s wife dies, a violent storm tears their home --- and the eight hectares of land beneath it --- away from the Scottish coast, sending it adrift into the Atlantic. Thirty years later, 12-year-old Ellie Mills discovers the fabled floating island off the coast of Nova Scotia and finds Clay still living in the weatherworn farmhouse perched on its highest hill. When the island vanishes overnight, Ellie is left questioning if it ever existed at all. But decades later, the island resurfaces --- and Ellie, now in her 30s, returns, determined to uncover the truth. What she finds is even stranger: Clay hasn’t aged a single day. Faced with the impossible, Ellie learns that some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved --- and that a life shaped by wonder may hold more promise than one bound by certainty.

Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James --- a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books --- he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend. Called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore…and soon after Travis stumbles upon it, he disappears. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral; his wife, Calla; and her sister, Bee, keep from one another.