Charlotte, newly widowed after her husband dies in a car crash, escapes to Portsmouth, NH to get away from her in-laws, and deal with her own grief. She rents a room on a wooden houseboat, which she shares with an emotional seventeen-year-old girl, and the boat's owner, an aging blue-haired widow, becoming involved in their lives. She joins an archaeological dig, working to reconstruct the past of an ancient graveyard while burying her own recent history.