In 1996, everything changed for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at sixteen to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina's Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind ... until she met Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce showed her how much there was to love about the windswept beach town-and introduced her to photography, a passion that would define the rest of her life ... much like Bryce. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote and iconic locations around the world. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a newly sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on an assistant to help manage the business, she finds herself becoming close with the young man; and as they count down the last days of the season together, she begins to tell him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier-and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.