The day before the publication of The Sentinel's Skin, a novel that would become a huge bestseller, its author, Margo Clarke, disappeared without a trace. Five years later, her only apprentice finds himself trapped in a life and a city that are closing in on him, and he has sworn never to go near the literary world again. But the anniversary of the literary phenomenon, and also of Margo's disappearance, reopens wounds that never healed. A party, an unexpected tribute, and a seemingly trivial conversation push the young man to do what he had avoided for years: confront the memory of his former mentor, with whom he shared a bond as intense as it was ambiguous. As he traces the clues Margo left behind, he will begin to discover that no one ever truly disappears...