In 1984, Jolene Iolas, a student in upstate New York, encounters Martin Sloane's art while visiting a Toronto gallery. Flush with the confidence of youth, she strikes up a correspondence with the older artist, and eventually the two become lovers. Introduced to a constancy of love she has never known, Jolene relaxes into the rituals of being someone's other half. She learns Martin's story and cherishes it as her own. He becomes a fixture in her life, a star in her sky.

And then, he vanishes. There is no hint of his fate, no chain of cause to be followed. Over a long fall, the shock slowly hardening into fact, Jolene sheds her life, losing everything, including her oldest friend, Molly, to inexpressible grief.

Ten years pass, Jolene slowly learns to stop trying to make sense of it all. But before she can fully return to life, the opportunity to confront a ghost arises. Word has come from Molly, of all people, that someone named Sloane has been exhibiting artworks identical to Martin's in Irish galleries. Jolene travels to Dublin, where she reluctantly reconnects with Molly and together, they find themselves lost in a jumble of pasts as they try to piece together what happened to Martin Sloane.

An exquisitely crafted novel, Martin Sloane is about the mysteries of love and art, the weight of history, and what it means to bear memory for the missing and the dead.