Anna spends summer days supervising three little girls, including her niece, Julia Demarest, on an island off the coast of Haven Point, Maine. A college graduate determined to remain unmarried, Anna is eager to establish herself independently. Inspired by the summer antics of Julia and her friends, Anna writes "Liberty Island" under a pen name. Young readers are rhapsodic and it is a runaway bestseller, but it’s not well received by the society matrons. With "Liberty Island" growing in popularity, Anna’s secret is in peril. 1922: Julia was once proud of her aunt’s "Liberty Island" books. But as new ideas take hold amongst her peers, she has come to see them as quaint. But in an effort to break free of expectations, she has ended up alienated from her family. When Elizabeth urgently calls her back to Haven Point, Julia is confronted by all the things she's been trying to escape.

In 1944, Maren Larsen is determined to do her part to help the war effort. As a cadet nurse at Walter Reed Medical Center, she’s swept off her feet by Dr. Oliver Demarest, whose family spends summers in an insular community on the rocky coast of Maine. In 1970, as the nation grapples with the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, Oliver and Maren are grappling with their fiercely independent 17-year-old daughter, Annie, who has fallen for a young man they don’t approve of. Before the summer is over, a terrible tragedy will strike the Demarests --- and in the aftermath, Annie vows never to return to Haven Point. In 2008, Annie’s daughter, Skye, has arrived in Maine to help scatter her mother’s ashes. Maren knows that Annie never told Skye the whole truth about what happened during that fateful summer.