On the morning of her 70th birthday, Georgianna Grove receives an unexpected letter that calls her back to Missing Lake, Wisconsin, where her mother was murdered 66 years earlier. Georgie’s father had confessed to the murder the next morning and was carted off to a state penitentiary. Determined to unearth the truth, Georgie takes her reluctant family on what will become a dangerous canoe trip up the swollen Bone River to return to the campsite that has haunted her memories.

It is 1973, and Lucy Painter is a children's book illustrator and a single mother of two. She leaves New York and the married father of her children to live in a tightly knit Washington neighborhood in the house where she grew up and where she discovered her father’s suicide. Lucy hopes for a fresh start, but her life is full of secrets. As the new neighbors enter their lives, her family’s safety and stability become threatened.