Grieving and suddenly alone in the world after the loss of her parents, Caitlin Maharg leaves everything she knows in Canada for Northern Ireland, to pursue her love of poetry while living in a cottage by the Irish Sea. While feeling like a child again in a foreign land still affected by the Troubles, she is haunted by the secrets the deaths of her parents unleashed. In her longing for emotional closeness, she becomes friends then lovers with a well-known poet with a roguish charm. Flouting the paisley headscarf of respectability, she plunges into a relationship that gives her an entry to the literary world, but at a price as his controlling nature slowly strips away her sense of self.