Against the haunted, Gothic landscape of New England, an elusive manuscript of a renowned Muslim professor, who died under mysterious circumstances, is stolen from a university library’s special collections.  The manuscript reveals an irreconcilable metaphysical phenomenon that the professor experienced shortly before her death.  Twenty-six years later, this document connects the fates of other individuals, including a homeless drifter, an emergency room resident physician, an aspiring runway model, and a man who is intent on exculpating himself from a heinous crime.  A depiction of the ways in which our past problematizes and blurs the manner in which we see, or desire to see, things, The Claw of the Magnolia examines the ways in which we justify desire, trauma, suffering, and killing in order to absolve our troubled ghosts and secrets while continuing to live.