During the sweltering summer of 1845, the savage murder of two girls shocks the citizens of Manhattan. Edgar Allan Poe, despite the grisly subject matter of his own writings, is just as shaken by these horrendous crimes as the panic-stricken public. Suspicion of the killer's identity immediately swirls around Chief Wolf Bear, one of the human attractions a P.T. Barnum's American Museum, Convinced of Chief Wolf Bear's innocence, Poe deduces that the city conceals a monster in its teeming masses, one with an ever-growing appetite for human prey. As frenzied emotions course through the city, Poe soon uncovers a dark secret more powerful than anything he could have imagined—one that may reach the upper echelons of politics and privilege.