During World War II, Felicity Bathburn is living in Bottlebay, Maine, with her eccentric relatives and their foster child Derek, whom she has grown to love, but when a man claiming to be Derek's true father arrives and starts asking all sorts of strange questions Felicity becomes suspicious of his motives.

In 1930 Abby Nichols is an eight-year-old girl growing up in Maine, but as the Depression deepens, and her mother dies, the responsibility of taking care of her family falls to her, and she has to put her dreams of going to college and becoming a writer on hold.

On an island off the coast of Maine, where children ride lobster boats to school, Piper wants a horse but finds, instead, another object hidden in the red maple tree.