Three years after being kidnapped as a "live specimen" in a cruel experiment to determine the cause of her deafness, Mary Lambert has a grown weary of domestic life on Martha's Vineyard, and even of her once-beloved writing. So when an old acquaintance summons her to an isolated manor house outside Boston to teach a young deaf girl to communicate, Mary agrees. But can a child of eight with no prior language be taught? And is Mary up to the task?...

Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past.