When twins Liza and Elspeth de Kooning wake in the cold Vermont pre-dawn light to their mother's cataclysmic scream, the eight-year-olds know their lives have changed indelibly and forever. With their father buried and their possessions tossed into shoe boxes and garbage bags, the twins and their young mother head south to the wealthy suburbs of College Park, MD to stay with Uncle Doug. Here they encounter the brittle veneer of the nouveau riche, their stuck-up cousins and their uncle's docile alcoholic wife Kitty. Enter their mother's sister Serena who rescues them-a Wiccan in purple velvet whose past is besmirched with lengthy visits to the psyche ward. The four take off on a sticky September day to manage a failing B and B on the fringes of the Maine Appalachians. Here Liza's up against rural poverty and her bourgeoning sexuality as a young gay woman. If that's not enough, her mom and aunt share a lover who possesses an eerie resemblance to her dead father and her twin befriends a rogue bear who visits their house to eat their garbage. But it's her twin's radical acceptance of their quirky lives in the lonely woods that alienates Liza from all that was once good. At 30, Liza desperately wants to mend the rift in her family, but her guilt of having disappeared so many years before gets in her way.