On her way to teach a class at Harvard, Eloise Hempel receives a devastating phone call: her sister and her husband have been killed in an accident. Eloise must return to Cincinnati to take their three children out of the hands of her own incapable mother. She moves back into the century- old house and, after her mother leaves, pours her own money into it. Nearly two decades later, Eloise is still in that house when their makeshift family begins to fall apart.
