Before anyone else is awake, on a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the freshwater pond below "The Paper Palace" - the gently decaying set of cabins in the Back Woods of Cape Cod where her family has spent every summer for generations. As she passes the house, Elle glances through the screen porch at the uncleared table from the dinner the previous evening: empty wine glasses, candle wax on the tablecloth, echoes of laughter of family and friends. Then she dives beneath the surface of the pond and recalls what else happened last night: the secret passionate encounter with her childhood soul mate, out behind the house, as Elle's husband and mother chatted to the guests inside. So begins a story that unfolds over twenty-four hours and across fifty years, as decades of family legacies, love, lies, secrets and one unspeakable incident from her childhood lead Elle to the precipice of a life-changing decision. Over the course of this day, Elle will have to decide between the world she has made with her much-loved husband, Peter, and the life she'd always imagined would be hers with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event had not forever changed the course of their lives.-- Back cover.