Lindy has the summer of a lifetime planned at her family’s beloved cottage in Summerland Cove, Maine. She’s slated big events three weekends in a row: her husband David’s 50th birthday party, her parents’ 50th anniversary party, and her oldest daughter Hailey’s wedding. But when David doesn’t show up for his own party, everything about the life they’ve created together is thrown into question. The agonizing days tick by and still no David. Lindy struggles to remain calm, even as long-buried details of the family’s past begin to surface, offering distressing clues. Meanwhile, her mother seems to be harboring secrets of her own, her father has grown alarmingly absent-minded, and Hailey wrestles with whether she should get married at all --- even if her father does turn up.

In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago. Three years later, Cecily is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected --- and dangerous --- course. In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she has raised and claimed as her own for nearly 70 years.

Ellen Baker's new novel is a sweeping multigenerational saga of the searing power of war, memory, friendship and family.