Synopsis:

Colonial New England: a man wakes up each day in a new body, thinking the day before was only a dream. Each day he sees things that almost spark a memory but he can't quite put a finger on it: a symbol that pops up in various places, a woman who attempts to speak to him every day, phrases and code words that seem so familiar but he can't figure out why. After a certain number of days of this (maybe 8-12?) he is finally having a few memories, but he still thinks they are a dream, and after a talk with the woman who constantly seems to find him, he decides it is only a dream and that he will wake up if he kills himself. The book is told in first person POV so hopefully the reader assumes that the main character will not die...but he does. He kills himself, and the book switches to the woman's perspective. She describes looking on as he kills himself, then returns to where his actual body lies, in a coma in his house. She was betrothed to him, but he was a ship captain and was struck by lightning out at sea and went into this coma. So she hired an apothecary/witch doctor to help her bring him back to himself, but it backfired, and she spent every day searching for him only to finally watch him die. When she returns to the apothecary to mourn the final results, he gives her drugged tea and that makes her obedient to him, and he asks her to marry him, and she agrees and the reader understands that he will drug her the rest of her life to keep her in subservience to him...tragic.