When Billie Cooper receives a startling medical diagnosis just before a summer-long vacation, she decides to keep it secret. Her husband Derek is a Defense Department official immersed in the Vietnam war effort. Her two sons are backpacking through Europe. She can't burden them. She has to face the issue alone.

She settles into a beautiful house on a hundred-foot-high cliff just south of Bar Harbor. With her husband often in Washington, D.C., Billie befriends a part-time cook named Lillian Moore. Of Native American heritage, Lillian introduces her to ancient remedies in a desperate attempt to cure what might never be cured. Billie also befriends a senile neighbor, Riley James, a lonely but lovable man who tells preposterous stories and lives in a crooked cottage by the sea, as well as three young girls who joyfully play in a secret fort hidden in nearby woods. This mismatched band of friends, and the clues contained in an overgrown family cemetery, teach Billie the meaning of life, helping her see what she had never before seen. She touches the hearts and souls of those around her, just as they touch hers, friendships formed for eternity.