Mozart, Wisconsin’s most renowned raconteur and local eccentric, Ben Ladysmith, vanished two years ago following a tragic boating accident. Obsessed with the disappearance of his friend and former professor, unemployed sportswriter Robert Cigar moves into the missing man’s home-to the dismay and annoyance of Ladysmith’s wife and three children. Though uninvited and unwanted, Robert is determined to keep Ben’s spirit alive, to share Ben’s elusive, hypnotic crow fables with the family that never hear them…and to solve the mystery that lies at the bottom of Oblong Lake-and, in the process, subtly, inadvertently and extraordinarily alters the household…and himself.