For precocious eight-year-old Kate Nichols, life in suburban New York seems pretty ordinary for the late 1960s. There are ballet classes, pet bunnies and air raid drills, outings to grandparents' homes and humiliating boys in chino pants. She derives strength from the surgeon father she idolizes and her family's lineage of dressmakers, all of them sewers who plan and execute with precision.

But Kate's understanding of her world is shattered when she learns of an uncle who died inexplicably in the hospital just days after his birth. As she navigates adolescence, she must choose whether to crack open the mystery or acquiesce to the family's established pattern of secrecy and repression. It's not until she is a single mother that her own feelings of loss trigger a search into the past, revealing a tale of generational trauma, maternal strength and how far we'll go to protect the people we love.