Conrad and Rose met as children, fell in love as teenagers, married the moment they had Rose's parents' consent, and defied the warning that young marriages age poorly. On the contrary, their marriage flourished right up to the time of Rose's death more than fifty years after the wedding. So, at seventy-five, Conrad finds himself horribly alone, rejecting offers of consolation, neglecting Rose's garden for the four months since her death.

Even so, it's there - in that ragged and overgrown paradise - that an apparation confronts the grieving, distraught widower one blustery fall night. Had it been Rose, Conrad might have found a way to follow her. It isn't Rose, though - it's someone else altogether.

And the visitation is so startling that Conrad, who believed he would never want any human company beyond Rose's, feels compelled to spread the news. In some cases, his description of the encounter falls on deaf ears (his neighbor, the fearful widow May Brown is afraid of the dark, much less ghosts), but others in the small New Hampshire town are drawn to his story.

When storm rains break a dam and flood waters threaten the town and its people, Conrad realizes how deeply he belongs, how much he wants to save it all. A loner who found himself all too alone, Conrad learns the precious lesson of reaching out, a lesson Rose tried all her life to teach him.