Cassie Callinan is a dutiful corporate wife, carefully preserving the safety of the status quo and her husband's camellias. When she learns she has lost her husband to a younger woman, she panics. Who is she, without the familiar props of her marriage? Fleeing her own life, Cassie finds herself amongst the eccentric inhabitants of Shearwater, an isolated coastal village. Against her will, she is gradually drawn into the life of the town with all its dramas, joy and secrets, and begins to discover who she really is.