When Isabel Burley returns home to care for her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, she finds a bemused, angry old woman, prey to the dangers of failing memory, the inability to run her household—and the local villains who are eyeing her isolated home. But as the locals close in, Isabel finds herself struggling with her own emotions. She thinks she has come home to do some good, but is she really looking for the affection she lacked as a child? Alienated by her mother's growing eccentricity, Isabel becomes locked in a relationship of love, conflict, and simmering violence, with roots that go deep into the past.