July 1954: an Island off the coast of Maine. Ann Grant—a 25-year-old New York career girl—is a bridesmaid at her best friend's lavish wedding. Also present is a man named Harris Arden, whom Ann has never met...

After three marriages and five children, Ann Lord lies dying in an upstairs bedroom of a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What comes to her, eclipsing a stream of doctor's visits and friends stopping by and grown children overheard whispering from the next room, is a rush of memories from a weekend 40 years ago in Maine, when she fell in love with a passion that even now throws a shadow onto the rest of her life.