This is the story of Dud No-man, a historical novelist widowed after a year-long unconsummated marriage to a woman who continues to haunt him. Inspired by pity and his own deep loneliness, Dud takes Wizzie Ravelston, an itinerant circus performer, into his home and heart. Yet even as the characters in Dorchester struggle with the perplexities of love, desire, and faith, it is the looming fortress of Maiden Castle that exerts the otherworldly force that irrevocably determines the course of their lives.