26-year-old Calculus teacher, Gabriel Black, has finally returned to his hometown in Florence, Oregon. After moving away at the young age of twelve to avoid "the shift", an urban legend of his people that his mother wholeheartedly believed in, he has come home to surround himself with family. Though the death of his mother is still a heavy weight on his heart, Gabriel knows that through his family, he will find healing. What he doesn't expect to find is 18-year-old Emilia Davenport, who's been sent to finish off her last year of high school with her grandmother in Florence after an emotionally brutal junior year. When Gabriel's eyes meet Emilia's, the world itself shifts on its axis and a buried, dormant part of himself, a part he never truly believed to exist, awakens.