Margaret Bradley is the most senior associate at her prestigious law firm, and on track to make partner. It's the late 1970s, and since her days at law school she has been fighting to prove herself in a male-dominated field. Though her climb up the professional ladder hasn't been an easy one, she feels passion and purpose in her job. That is, until her entire world is shattered by one event: the sudden death of her son Andrew, a military pilot. Now, Margaret lives with a heavy, all-encompassing sense of loss and regret, and it is pushing her further and further away from her husband, Jack, a successful geologist and a loving and loyal partner. Margaret is drawn back to Sweetbarry, a small town on the coast of the North Atlantic, where she spent much of her childhood and inherited her beloved grandmother's house. Her life-long best friend, Aileen, is close by. Theirs is a friendship that has endured happiness and tragedy over the years, so when Aileen's adult son, Danny, is questioned by local police in connection with a violent crime against two children, Margaret rushes to Sweetbarry to offer legal advice. At the same time, she is consumed by memories of her son and the crushing loss of his death. Just when she feels there is no comfort for her in her work or her faltering marriage, she reaches out with an incredible act that has profound reverberations for the family of the two children, a family that, like hers, has been touched by violence and grief.