Twenty-five-year-old Anna—restless, famished and emotionally numb—is following the long-cold trail of her father, a celebrated luthier, whose death has always haunted her. She's tracked his former business partner to a sailboat on Bellingham Bay, determined to pry from the old man the secrets of their guitarmaking trade, and maybe a few answers about her father.

Anna catches an echo of her musical father in Arlan, guitar player for a local band. Soon she's living on his sofa, hanging out with his girlfriend—having friends for the first time, even. And if Anna's new friends do drugs, read her journal and leave open a few too many bedroom doors, who's to say they aren't real friends? And if Anna has feelings for Arlan, who's to say where her loyalty lies?

During a single summer's worth of days, gin-soaked and colored with longing, Anna rediscovers her senses, shut down since her father's death, and finds that the only way to get free of her past is to embrace it.