On the eve of his college graduation, Harry is called home by his step-mother Alice, to their house on the Maine coast, following the unexpected death of his father. But who really is Alice, his father's much younger second wife? In a brilliant split narrative, Swanson teases out the stories and damage that lie in her past. And as her story entwines with Harry's in the present, things grow increasingly dark and threatening... Evoking Patricia Highsmith and Agatha Christie.