October 2017, north of Boston. The body of a 60-year-old drug addict and former prostitute is pulled from the Shawsheen River. The only person questioned is a former lover from decades before, now an aging English professor at a nearby college. The death is ruled accidental.

August 1984, Atlantic City. Ten casinos are taking in $5 million a day; the Bruno crime family, following a deadly mob war, is in control of the city's rackets: loan-sharking, protection, fight-fixing, high-end prostitution. Among its most prized assets is a 28-year-old, $1,000-a-night escort named Sarah—beautiful and spirited, but deeply guarded, tethered to her mob bosses by an unknowable secret.

Harry Hopper, a local news reporter known for his deep digs into the resort's darkest corners, comes to know her and is soon obsessed with the shadows she casts, then with Sarah herself. The two become lovers.

But the secrets don't yield. And the dangers are too great. The years pass. There is an ending. Then a new beginning--but in a very different world.