Six years after the death of his wife, famed mystery writer Ford Newcombe has a bad case of writer's block. When he hears the story of a woman who was murdered because she loved the devil, Ford decides to move to Cole Creek, North Carolina where the story is said to have taken place. He hires Jackie Maxwell, the teller of the story, as his assistant, when strange things begin to happen, and they quickly discover a connection between their lives and the past. A recently widowed mystery novelist experiences a reawakening of his emotions in a new relationship with his assistant, in a romance set against a decades-old ghost story in North Carolina.