After Margreete Bright accidentally starts a fire at her Maine home, her daughter Liddie realizes that her mother can no longer live alone. Leaving Michigan, Liddie, her husband Harry, and their children settle in Maine with Margreete. Set during the Vietnam War, this winner of the Maine Literary Award for Fiction chronicles ten years in the life of the family, as Liddie struggles to become a professional cellist, Harry finds that his opposition to the war endangers his position as a teacher, and Margreete slowly descends into a private world of memories, even as she comes to find a larger purpose in them.