Liam Pennywell has never liked teaching at a run-down private school, so when he is forced to retire at sixty-one, it doesn’t bother him. But what does is having no memory of an assailant who attacked him on the first night after he moved to his efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. He’s driven to recover this memory and at the same time recover other moments of his life that he has, over time, forgotten. But he can’t do it alone. What he needs is a “hired rememberer” — someone who will do the remembering for him — but when he finds Eunice, he gets a whole lot more than he anticipated.