On the fifth anniversary of his wife's death, birthday balloons snag Slater Watts 15th-story office window, freed when a killer knifes a mother in an alley. Watts can't save her, and a woman dies in his arms yet again on July 2. Watts, a journalist, who's sick of Atlanta, crime, his job, and memories of his wife's death, sees the balloons as a wake-up call and decides to quit his job. But his editor, a treacherous paraplegic gives him the most exciting assignment he's ever had, literally changing his life. Watts's mission? Go to lawless, wild Forbidden Island off the Georgia-South Carolina coast and profile a murderous voodoo priest who rules the island like a god. Watts, accepts the assignment and embarks on a suicide mission. A haunted man, Watts sees the assignment as a chance to get the voodoo priest to break his dying daughter's coma. Fate intervenes when Watts meets Tyler Hill, a woman with dark secrets who believes her runaway daughter lives on Forbidden Island. Hill convinces Watts to take her to the island, and her mission supplants his, threatening his last chance to save his daughter. And then Watts and Hill make a horrifying discovery that threatens everything and redemption or destruction for all-even the island-hangs in the balance. Love, dark secrets, carnage, unrivaled beauty, and a do-or-die mission to save what's left of family await readers of Forbidden Island whose phosphorescent sea, majestic dunes, green marshes, and star-filled heavens will long haunt them.