Hay-on-Wye, 1995. After the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, left him shattered, young antiquarian bookseller Peter Byerly relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries in a bookshop, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out. Of course, it isn't really her. Yet the resemblance is uncanny.