Elizabeth's eyes have failed. She can no longer read the books she loves or see the paintings that move her spirit, but her mind remains sharp and music fills the vacancy left by her blindness. When her father's journals are discovered on a shipwrecked boat, she enlists the help of a delinquent teen, Morgan, who is completing community service at the senior's residence where Elizabeth lives. An unlikely relationship develops between the two women as they work to decipher the books and are drawn into the musty words the Porphyry Island light-keeper penned more than 70 years ago. In the process they discover they are both connected to the isolated island, their lives touched by Elizabeth's enigmatic twin sister Emily and the beautiful but harsh Lake Superior environment. But for Elizabeth, the faded pages of her father's journals hold more secrets than she anticipates and threaten the very core of who she is.