On a snowy winter night Bartholomew Judd happens upon a mysterious saltbox homestead on a narrow lane called Tommy's Path in a small Connecticut village. That spring he and his wife Rebecca are living in the old home, leaving behind a life in Manhattan where he was a professor at Fordham and she a high-school teacher. Burdened by family scandal and psychological upheaval in their lives-ravaged by a past that nearly destroyed their marriage-both seek renewal in the small New England town. But Bart discovers the ancient home has its own secrets-secrets that make the past he has tried to escape all the more real and horrible. There's a quirky neighbor whose weekly yard sales yield bits and pieces of Bart's fantasy world. And he is convinced the old woman up the road is the reincarnation of a witch hanged in colonial Connecticut. Suddenly this lovely saltbox in a bucolic neighborhood becomes a place where Bart has to confront the demons that haunt his every waking moment-and his nightmares.