The modest ranch house where Callie Wyeth grew up looks just the same as she remembers it - right down to the well-worn sheets in the linen closet. But in the years since Callie lived here, almost everything else has changed. Her father, once indomitable, is in poor health. And Callie is a single mother with a beautiful little boy, Henry, who has just been diagnosed with autism. Returning to this quiet New Hampshire community seems the best thing to do for both her father and her son - even if it means facing Linden Finch, the boy she loved and left for reasons she's sure he'll never forgive. Linden is indeed stunned when he sees Callie and her son. Yet in the warm, funny relationship that develops between Henry and Linden's menagerie of rescued animals, Callie begins to find hope - not just that her son might break through the wall of silence separating him from the world, but that she too can learn to make a new start.