Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, and in particular with the events of the summer of 1934, when the reclusive Lovecraft lived for two months with a young fan named Robert Barlow and his family in central Florida. Lovecraft was forty-three that summer, and Barlow was sixteen. What were the two of them up to, and what did they feel for each other? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police call it a suicide, but Marina doesn't believe them.

As Marina follows her husband’s trail in an attempt to learn the truth, The Night Ocean moves across the decades and along the length of the continent, from a remote Ontario town, through New York and Lovecraft’s native Providence, to Mexico City. Along the way, we meet Lovecraft and Barlow, who went on to become a well-known authority on the civilization of the Aztecs; the Futurians, a group of brilliant young science fiction writers; William S. Burroughs; Roy Cohn; and L. C. Spinks, a kindly Canadian appliance salesman, and the only person who knows the origins of The Erotonomicon, which may be the intimate diary of Lovecraft himself.

A historical tour de force, The Night Ocean is about love and deception; it’s about the way that stories earn our trust, and betray it.