English professor Dale Hoberman is out of his depth as a visiting professor at Oxford. His one comfortable social connection is with a man long dead. In his spare time, he takes on the task of analyzing the possessions of Martin Winthrop, a brilliant physicist who met with a tragic end. When science and serendipity give Dale a chance to meet Martin, Dale is suddenly comfortable in his own skin, but is his happiness with Martin worth risking the powerful forces of time and physics, or is Martin's tragic end destined to be?