The death of her mother brings writer Annie Barnes back to the New Hampshire mill town of her youth to investigate the pollution caused by the local paper mill, a contamination that may have been the cause of her mother's fatal illness.

Shaken by a painful divorce, successful television writer Debra Barry leaves New York for the beautiful countryside of New Hampshire where she hopes to find peace and solitude to mend her wounded heart. The old house she's bought, though, needs as much repairing as her own shattered emotions.