Tuck is slow to understand the circumstances that have driven her family to an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine. Squatting there now, she must care for her spirited young daughter and scrape together enough money to leave before winter arrives. Relying on the island for sustenance and answers - bladderwrack, rosehips, tenacious little green crabs; smells held by the damp walls of the house, field guides and religious texts, a failed invention left behind by her missing father - Tuck lives moment-by-moment, as her husband struggles to detox.