In New York City in 1964, Joan Cavanaugh, an uncertain young wife and mother, and Peter 'Hutch' Hutchinson have a brief but passionate affair, yet during their almost 30 years of marriage, Joan and her husband Graham successfully raise their three daughters, Ceci, Anne, and Carolyn. When Joan dies of metastatic breast cancer in 1989, she takes the truth of Anne's paternity to her grave.

In 2014 in Portland, Carolyn and Julia are next-door neighbors and the closest of friends. During the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Graham travels from New York to visit his youngest daughter and her family. Julia's parents, Hutch and Alice, have recently relocated to Portland from the East Coast, and by the time the carefully choreographed introduction of the women's respective parents takes place, Hutch has realized that the family his lover left behind is now significant in his own daughter's life.

What unfolds following Hutch's discovery upends both families, threatening the foundation of two women's established friendship.

Revisiting a family from Dugan's story collection, So Much a Part of You, The House of Cavanaugh explores the flaws of even the most seemingly stable and unblemished families, and how the ripple effects of a long-buried secret have the power to strengthen or destroy the closest ties between family and friends.