It's 1954 and U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule arrive at a small island in
Massachusetts' Outer Harbor. It is home to Ashcliffe Hospital a federal institution for the
criminally insane and one of the patients has escaped. Although the two men are new partners
they have already developed a wry jocular relationship while also swapping personal painful
details. Daniels' lost his much-loved wife two years prior in a fire while Aule requested a
transfer out of Seattle after being harassed over his personal relationship with a Japanese
American woman. After interviewing the hospital's medical personnel both men have the feeling
they are being stonewalled especially by the director who seems to alternate between a cold
authoritarianism and a sudden and sweeping compassion. When the island is hit by gale-force
winds and Aule disappears Daniels must go it alone beset by the fear that he has been fed
psychotropic drugs and the belief that the hospital is performing radical brain surgery as part
of a secret-ops program.
