On the night rain sealed off the ferry crossing, a boat with no one at the oars came upriver to shore. Its lantern had not gone out. There was no one aboard, yet wet footprints crossed the old house of the dead and stopped at the door of someone still alive. An unnamed monk had only wanted to cross the river, but he was swept into an old case in which everyone was lying: the dead beneath the water were searching for someone to take their place, while the living on shore had already chosen who it would be. From riverside crossings to mountain villages, county funeral homes, eerie academies, opera troupe docks, and frontier garrisons, he encounters ghosts as he follows the traces his master left behind years ago. But he gradually discovers that the hardest things to lay to rest are not always ghosts. They are people trapped by debts, reputations, desires, and silence.
