Salem Falls takes place in Salem Falls, NH in the year 2000. A man named Jack St. Bride has just been released from jail for a sexual assault of a minor case and he goes to live in this town. There, he gets a job at a local diner where no one knows him. While there he falls in love with the diner’s owner, Addie.
In Salem Falls, there is a history of witches living there back during the Salem Witch Trials. A group of teenage girls embrace their so-called witch ancestry and participate in spells and chants and other rituals. One girl, the group’s leader, Gilly, sees Jack working at the diner and decides she is going to cast a spell on him to make him love her. She tries, but he ignores her. He is scared to get too close to a teenage girl after he was convicted of rape 2 years earlier.
One night, Gilly and her friends go into the woods one night to hold a seance. On this night, Jack is getting drunk at a local bar and stumbles into the woods where the girls are, and blacks out. The next day, he is being called into the police station because Gilly is making sexual assault claims against him. Jack has no recollection of the previous night, but he knows he would never let himself be put into that position again.
Salem Falls addresses many issues from sexual assault to flaws in the legal system. Jack St. Bride was wrongly accused the first time, but he was accused, leading people to believe he had done it the second time he was convicted, when it was the flaws judiciary system that caused him to get judged so harshly by others before they even knew him.