In Harrow's Bend, a small Vermont town clinging to the frozen shore of Black Pine Lake, the end of every winter brings the Thaw Pool: the whole town bets on the exact moment the ice will break. But this year an unnaturally warm spring rushes everything forward—and the opening ice starts giving back a thirty-year-old secret the town chose to drown.
Devon Marsh, twenty-three, a cold-water rescue volunteer, pulls the first body from the lake. Then the second. They all belong to the same generation, all appear in one old photograph, all die drowned where water shouldn't be able to kill—a child's mitten left beside each corpse, the Thaw Pool clock pushed forward one notch after every death.
As the lake melts, Devon realizes the victims aren't random: they're the guilty parties of an old crime. And the name that keeps surfacing is the one she fears most. The thaw is a countdown. When the ice finally opens, the truth will rise to the surface—and it may pull Devon under with it.
