After the sudden loss of her husband, Mariah returns to the sleepy beach town of Avalon, New Jersey, to save the house her grandfather built, a rambling Victorian lovingly nicknamed The Pink Poodle. There, she rekindles a romance with Trey, a lifeguard and the first crush of her teenage years, and unravels the mystery of her last summer in Avalon twenty-five years before, when she met the two people who had changed the trajectory of her life.

"...there's a dreamy feel to the talk of storms and romance, adolescence and adulthood, and ancient stories and second chances. And that mood fits well with the ideas raised: of ocean waves that soften what they touch but never erase it, of a place changed by time yet still somehow outside of time, and of connections that change but never disappear. An emotional tale built of lightweight materials that has a surprising and satisfying depth." Kirkus Reviews