When her college-bound daughter leaves home, Lynn Darling, widowed over a decade earlier, finds herself alone and utterly lost, with no idea of what she wants or even who she is. Searching for answers, she leaves New York for the solitary woods of Vermont. Removed from the familiar, cocooned in the natural world, her only companions a new dog and a compass, she hopes to develop a sense of direction --- both in the woods and in her life.