1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at 16 to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind…until she met Bryce Trickett, a teenager who introduced her to photography. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him and tells him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier --- and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.