An elegy, a nihilistic ghost story, weaving elements of history, linguistics, and myth, the Stove Junker is a harrowing tale of heartbreak and loss. After losing his wife to cancer, Somerset Garden returns to his abandoned homestead in Northeastern, PA to reconcile himself with the past, and crashes his vehicle upon arriving. While a blizzard barrels down over the area, and despite injury, attempting to renovate the broken house, Somerset discovers a twelve-year-old boy squatting on the property. As the boy, “Jack,” descends into a fever, Somerset descends into the madness of his past, detailing the events that led his son Cole to vanish from the town decades before.