When Grace Hooper, on the verge of womanhood, and her nine year-old brother Billy are left orphaned by a freak accident at the beginning of a long, hot summer, they find themselves cast adrift from their old life and numb with grief. Sent to stay with their estranged grandfather on the remote farmstead where their mother grew up, there they must try to uncover a new understanding of the world and their place in it. But in the relentless heat and the unnatural calm of the near-deserted farm, nature itself soon becomes both enemy and ally, and as the bond between brother and sister disintegrates, Grace discovers that the farm hosts a tragic past and an uncertain future.