In the late 1990s, gifted teenager Erzsebet Eszterhas and her friend Sebastian went missing without a trace, only to inexplicably reappear three years later. Haunted and physically disabled by her encounter with the powers of darkness, she retreats to a quiet and hidden life in rural southern California. Now, a decade later, she feels she has made peace with her traumatic past and accepted her life in exile. But far, far away on the opposite end of the Golden State, strange events threaten to shatter her uneasy repose and suck her back into the vortex of mysteries and shadows from which she fled.
The misty town of Crescent City, California rests on a foggy bay between the vast redwood forest and the Pacific Ocean, just south of the Oregon border. When Deputy Sheriff Perd Gorlsen's daughter Kimmy vanishes from a nearby State Park, neither state nor local authorities can turn up any sign of her. After weeks of frivolous searching, the long-lost Sebastian - now serving a stint at the Del Norte County Jail - convinces him to to Erzsebet in a last ditch effort to rescue his daughter.
At first wishing only to reunite with her friend, Erzsebet travels north. But when someone begins making attacks on Erzsebet's life, she realizes there is more to the disappearance of Kimmy Gorlsen than meets the eye. As she reluctantly agrees to help Perd, Erzsebet delves into the secret history and folklore of the land of giants, discovering behind the child's disappearance a web of crime, espionage, secret societies, and black magick.
Propelled by curiosity and the call of destiny, Erzsebet must confront the ghosts of her own past as well as the ancient forces lurking in the dark heart of the Redwood Empire in time to save Kimmy from a fate worse than death.