When Rose O'Reilly White, a respected member of the small-town Deer Isle, Maine, community, died at age 97, she left many secrets, some monstrous and others magical, including her first love, a young woman who died in a tragic fire in 1942. This woman was her teacher; Rose was a teenager. Another secret was her later long involvement with an African-American woman. A third was her poisoning and killing a Catholic priest of many years ago after Rose learned he was a serial pedophile and wanted to prevent him from abusing other victims. Rose's husband, Bill, another respected member of the Deer Isle community, knew and accepted all this. But unlike others who die leaving secrets, Rose left a key to open them, and her filmmaker son Jack brings them to light as he sets out to produce a documentary of her life—an endeavor that reunites him with his first love, with whom he had a daughter unbeknownst to him until they are together again. A novel unlike any other, Burnt Cove artfully blends horror, supernatural, dark fantasy, time travel, love, death, and mystical resurrection.