Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of 19th-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to him has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past and her mother’s death: San Francisco. It is here where she will come to question everything she values.

As children, Sam and Elli were gorgeous identical twins. Once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to pills and booze. Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil. Now she has stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is Elli just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult?

Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina. Nina’s, Vanessa’s and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.

It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends. But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth.