When their father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, the sisters cope with the loss in different ways. Recovering from divorce and the collapsing journalism industry, Shannon manages a bottom-feeder rag and considers having a child for her cousin and his lover, an Army veteran. After Paige is kicked out of her band, she becomes obsessed with a reclusive songwriter she wants to make famous against his will. Claire's family and career are threatened by her attraction to a new hire she supervises, an African American who ignites her passion for literature and the deeper questions it asks of her. But, when their family's uncovered secrets threaten all they've known, the sisters will have to choose between lives they've dreamed of and those they love.

Inspired by Chekhov's Three Sisters with echoes of King Lear, While You Were Gone traces the journeys of three sisters growing up in and returning to a hometown that, like them, seems to reflect a new South. But beneath the surface changes are secrets that run as deep as the Tennessee River. While You Were Gone explores how three sisters living in the American South in the twenty-first century deal when their own dreams collide with their own misconceptions about family, race, gender, and the larger world.