With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie, from the plains of the Midwest, has gone to university escaping her provincial home to encounter a complex world of culture and politics. She takes a job as a part-time nanny and becomes drawn into the life of the family with their newly-adopted child and increasingly complicated household. As her past becomes increasingly alien to her, Tassie finds herself becoming a
stranger to herself. As the year unfolds, love leads her to new and formative experiences, but it is then that the past and the future burst forth in dramatic and shocking ways.