The Postone family are Summer People. If they can rely on anything, they can rely on their summers in Maine. They spend every summer in a cottage by the sea and nothing - the cold mornings, the creaky porch steps, the crusty veteran who runs the general store - nothing ever changes. Until this summer. With a divorce on the horizon, a daughter on the brink of sexual awakening, and a veteran of the current war keeping watch from across the bay, after this summer nothing will ever be the same.