When Joshua and Nathalie Sandler's only child, fourteen-year-old Daniel, disappears one day in a town in western Massachusetts, their world changes in an instant. Over the next year, Joshua neglects everything else to search ceaselessly for their son, while Nathalie, a gifted cellist, withdraws into herself, unable to play a note of music.

With lyrical prose and building suspense, Sigel portrays the anguish of parents who, despite the crushing burden of uncertainty and grief, must continue to live their lives. We meet various townspeople with motives and secrets of their own who might be involved in the disappearance or its aftermath. There is the mean-spirited president of the Board of Selectmen, neighbors who either come forward to help or who hide evidence, a deeply human police chief, half a dozen troubled teenagers, and a dark-haired, passionate young woman with secrets of her own, who is drawn to Joshua and his plight. As the mystery of Daniel's disappearance deepens, Joshua and Nathalie struggle to find new meaning in their existence—and to discover if their fragmented marriage can ever be made whole again.