In 1983, Vee buried a box of mementoes at her husband's newly-dug grave. Twenty-five years later, on the anniversary of the day she buried him, Vee finds this box on her doorstep. But why did she bury that box full of keepsakes and who would be cruel enough to dig it up and send it to her so many years later? The mystery is slowly revealed as Vee drifts in and out of memories--her childhood in Northern Ontario during the 1950s and 1960s, her love affair with a charming Québécois man, a family wrenched apart by pride, a loss that unhinged her--and as her daughter, Lise, pieces together the puzzle of her mother’s past in an attempt not only to understand her mother's life, but also her own.