Scotland, 1863. In an attempt to escape her past in Glasgow, Bessy Buckley takes a job as a maid in a big house outside Edinburgh working for the beautiful Arabella. And it seems that Arabella  has a few secrets of her own, including her near-obsessive affection for a former maid who died in mysterious circumstances. But who is really responsible for what happened to Nora?

At thirty-eight, Jessie Maddox subscribes to House Beautiful, Southern Living, even Psychology Today. She has a comfortable life in Glenville, Georgia, with Turner, the most reliable, responsible husband in the world. But after the storybook romance, “happily ever after” never came. Now the housewife who once wanted to be Martha Stewart before there was a Martha Stewart is left to wonder: Where did the marriage go wrong? Why can’t she stop picturing herself as the perfect grieving widow?