When Reena, her little brother, Luke, and their parents first move to Maine, Reena doesn't know what to expect. She's ready for beaches, blueberries, and all the lobster she can eat. Instead, her parents "volunteer" Reena and Luke to work for an eccentric neighbor named Mrs. Falala, who has a pig named Paulie, a cat named China, a snake named Edna -- and that stubborn cow, Zora.
In a disused lighthouse on the Devon coast lives Peter Straker, a recluse who, in his dreams, is visited by some of the seventy-eight people he believes he killed twenty-four years ago. But Straker's solitude is about to be invaded. Imogen Doody, a school caretaker with a painful history that has left her prickly and unapproachable, inherits a run-down cottage in the nearby village. And she neeā¦