Since no one in Anna Foster’s family has spoken to her great-aunt, Claire, in decades, it’s a shock when Anna inherits Claire’s seaside cottage in Maine. The timing is fortuitous: Anna has just lost her job. She flees to the village of Banbury, intending to spend a few weeks clearing out the cottage before returning to her familiar anonymity in Boston. Instead, those plans take a sharp pivot when she discovers a brutal letter that her grandmother wrote to Claire over 60 years ago.

 

Anna becomes entrenched in uncovering the multi-layered truth about Claire’s estrangement from the family, a truth which has poignant and profound parallels to her own life. Meanwhile, Anna’s burgeoning relationship with a local artist, Seth, causes her stay in Banbury to shift from temporary to indefinite. Together, Anna and Seth work to find the identity of Claire’s mysterious lover from long ago. As Anna grows closer to Seth, she begins to accept her vulnerability and her new insights into her family.

 

Once Anna learns that Seth has kept a dream on hold for years, however, tension begins to build between them. She wants to help him take the leap, but the strain from their conflicting perspectives threatens to divide them. Guided by Claire's past and her own hopes and fears for the future, Anna must choose which path to take and what it means to be home.