In this compact literary gem, an historian retreats to a quiet cottage in rural Ireland to complete a biography of Isaac Newton. Why, he must unravel, did Newton suffer a mental collapse in 1693, and why did he write such a strange letter to his friend John Locke—hinting at a personal and philosophical crisis?

But as the summer days drift by, work is stalled as he becomes obsessed with the lives of the people around him—stranded Charlotte; doomed, drunken Edward; mysterious Ottilie. The more he tries to decipher the mysterious web of their lives—even while trying to decipher the central mystery of Newton’s—he becomes undone by the murky, unmeasurable forces of the human heart.