After her eccentric mother's death, young Arva House moves to a close-knit outport with hopes of escaping the past that plagues her. But tangled rumors follow, and she soon becomes the object of speculation. Craving a sense of stability, Arva makes hasty choices, and finds herself enmeshed in a net laden with deceit, infidelity, and latent hostility. Only when the man she thought she loved takes her apart, does she realize that all of her unique features somehow fit together to form a whole.

The repercussions of Hazel Boone's lifelong weakness for temptation percolates down through generations wounding everyone in her path, including her son, the painter David Boone and his young apprentice, Tilley Gover. During a winter of constriction nearly seventy years after her birth, these familiar strangers from Cupboard Cove are still reeling. When Hazel's heat finally cools, healing can begin for David and Tilley.