For most, the summer of 1988 was filled with sunshine and the sound of George Michael. But for eight-year-old Kris Barlow, it was her final summer with her mother; while other children watched Alf, she watched cancer eat her mother from within.

Three decades later, loss returns--this time in the form of her husband in a car accident. And so, Kris returns to the place where she first confronted loss--to that house on Lost Lake where she watched the life ebb out of the body of the woman who once carried her inside her own. It's here--amongst the tallgrass and by the crystal shores--that she and her eight-year-old daughter will make a stand against grief.

Kris soon finds that although the quaint shops of Main Street are unchanged, the lake town of Pacington, Kansas carries its own deep burden. Inside the husk of the home where she last saw her mother, an old friend awaits the return of Kris Barlow.