A woman phones the police claiming to have seen a girl running from a man in the forest. Fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan has disappeared. 

A young writer named Goldman has written a book about the girl who disappeared. The book is a bestseller, and he becomes a millionaire. 

Marcus Goldberg, “the new darling of American letters” (19), is suffering from writer’s block. A year has gone without work while he was enjoying his success. He lies to his agent and publisher, telling them he is writing. He begins to write furiously but non-productively; his publisher expects a new manuscript in six months, or he will sue.

Marcus calls his former college professor Harry Quebert, one of “most highly respected authors in the country” (27). The two met in 1998 at Burrows College, when Harry was 57, and bonded over boxing. Harry invites him to his house at Goose Cove in Somerset, New Hampshire, a small seaside town, and Marcus arrives on February 10, 2008. Marcus is envious of Harry’s reputation and wishes to understand how Harry wrote his most notable work, The Origin of Evil, in 1975, but Harry admits the book has overshadowed everything including his private life: “a lonely heart and a bunch of sad words” (34).