After twenty years of self-imposed exile, Boo Taylor finds he must return to Sweetpatch Island, South Carolina, following his fathers mysterious death. Upon his return, he is shocked to discover that the small, marshy barrier island he left behind is now covered with golf courses and swarming with tourists. It seems that everything he ran away from the violence, the hatred, the betrayal have all but vanished. But the island s ghosts are not so easily dispelled. King of Nod layers time and secrets in an intricate pattern of half-truths and glimpses of redemption that slowly dissect the riddle of the island s past and its inexorable connection to Boos own fate.