It’s July 1946, and after a decade of Depres­sion and war, life in Amer­i­ca is return­ing to nor­mal. But for Char­lotte and Mary Oswald, one tumul­tuous sum­mer will unearth all their secrets and upend their world once again. Over the course of the sum­mer, Char­lotte makes unex­pect­ed friends with two film-obsessed boys and, inspired by the movies of Alfred Hitch­cock and the ongo­ing Nurem­berg Nazi tri­als, the three begin plot­ting their own screen­play. Mean­while Mary, left behind in the near­ly emp­ty Thwait­es man­sion as the head house­keep­er, a role she was­n’t raised for, but has cho­sen to keep her daugh­ter safe, begins a steamy affair with the charm­ing indus­tri­al­ist Prescott Thwait­es, and reveals the hid­den parts of her­self. The last days of sum­mer rapid­ly approach­ing, Char­lot­te’s free­dom com­ing to an end, and the Thwait­es fam­i­ly soon return­ing, moth­er and daugh­ter hur­tle toward a point of no return as the long-buried mem­o­ries resur­face, blur­ring the line between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty, and threat­en­ing to expose the secret that could be the end of them all.