The hardscrabble Chase women-Mary, Hannah, and their mother, Diane-have been eking out a living running a tiny seaside motel that has been in the family for generations. Eighteen-year-old Mary Chase is a force of nature: passionate, beautiful, and free-spirited. Her much younger sister, Hannah, whom Mary affectionately calls Bunny, is imaginative, her head full of the stories Mary tells to give her a safe emotional place in the middle of their troubled world. When Diane dies in a car accident, Mary discovers that the motel is worth less than the back taxes they owe, and her finely tuned instincts for survival kick in. As the sisters begin a cross-country journey in search of a better life, she will stop at nothing to protect Hannah. But Mary wants to protect herself, too, for the secrets she promised she would never tell-but now may be forced to reveal-hold the weight of unbearable loss.