When Elsie Gormley falls and is forced to leave her Brisbane home of 62 years, Lucy Kiss and her family move in, eager to make the house their own. Still, Lucy can’t help but feel that she’s unwittingly stumbled into an entirely new life --- new house, new city, new baby --- and she struggles to navigate the journey from adventurous lover to young parent. In her nearby nursing facility, Elsie traces the years she spent in her beloved house, where she too transformed from a naïve newlywed into a wife and mother, and eventually, a widow. Gradually, the boundary between present and past becomes more porous for her, and for Lucy --- because the house has secrets of its own, and its rooms seem to share with Lucy memories from Elsie’s life.

In 1948, in the strange, silent aftermath of war, Anikka Lachlan has all she ever wanted --- until a random act transforms her into another postwar widow. A local poet, Roy McKinnon, experiences a different type of loss. How could his most powerful work come out of the brutal chaos of war, and why is he now struggling to regain his words and his purpose in peacetime? His childhood friend, Dr. Frank Draper, also seeks to reclaim his pre-war life but is haunted by his failure to help those who needed him most. Then one day, Ani finds a poem. She knows neither where it came from nor who its author is. An unexpected and poignant love triangle emerges, between Ani, the poem and the poet --- whoever he may be.