Venice, 1894. American novelist Henry James takes a night-time gondola out into the laguna to dump armfuls of a recently deceased lady's garments. Irish artist Reuben Ross accidentally witnesses this bizarre event. As he attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding it, Reuben finds himself adrift in the city's mist-shrouded maze of canals and waterways, entangled in ghostly and political intrigues that span the American Civil War, the Irish Home Rule Crisis and the First World War. Reuben risks losing his mind as he gradually discovers that there is more to drowning these gowns than the mere disposal of a dead woman's belongings.
