Jared and Clover - young, in love - follow their hippie dream of rural life to Circe, Vermont. But after only a year in their newly created Eden, Clover meets the mysterious itinerant peddler, Surt Mudspell. Fascinated, Clover follows him through time into the Circe of 1815, where he leaves her. Living the arduous pioneer life she and Jared idealized, Clover discovers a new love but also nature's dark power. When 1816, the legendary year without a summer, arrives she falls prey to the superstitions of Circe's inhabitants. Only Mudspell can save her and return her to her own time.