Spiritualism flourished in the aftermath of the Civil War. Families of soldiers who never returned home sought closure and found it in seances where they learned their loved ones were peacefully living on the other side, waiting to be reunited with those still in the mortal sphere. The scientific discoveries of the era, paradoxically, contributed to the spiritualistic fervor. Things that were only imagined such as rapid transmission of messages over long distances became reality with the invention of telegraphy. Who was to say that messages from the other side were impossible? Set in Boston in the latter half of the nineteenth century this novel tells the story of a merchant and a Harvard professor who fall under the spell of a charismatic medium."