After leaving her fiancé and quitting her job, veterinarian student Sadie Burrows meets with friends at a rental cabin on coastal Alabama’s Ward Island. Instead of a peaceful weekend, Sadie experiences devastation. A shadowy figure at the edge of the forest kills her best friend—her Australian Shepherd, Buddy—with a breath of smoke. The event leaves the once-reserved woman with a foggy memory of a tall man in a bowler hat and gentleman’s coat…and an unquenchable thirst for vengeance.

As she strives to lift the veil that shrouds the assailant’s identity, she learns he is indicated in other very recent and brutal murders on the island named for its previous Victorian owners. What’s more is GoPro footage from one of the killings, visions from a Seer boy in the Louisiana swamps, and a memoir Sadie finds in the Ward’s abandoned mansion leads her to the realization that he is not of this world. It has a surreal connection to the Hat Man sleep-paralysis phenomenon and to one of the world’s oldest urban legends, that of Spring-Heeled Jack.

With help from a local fishing charter captain, a witch-proficient police officer, and her two faithful friends, Sadie will either see to the destruction of the so-called Hat Man or die trying.

The Hat Man is the first story in a planned series.