Everyone has a summer that changes them forever . . .
X marks the spot for Bellingham, Washington, on Anna Medina's self-discovery map.
Twenty-five-year-old Anna - restless, famished and emotionally numb - is following the long cold trail of her father, a celebrated guitar maker whose death has always haunted her. She has tracked down his former business partner, now an old man, determined to pry out of him the secrets of their trade . . . and maybe a few answers about her father.
Then Anna catches an echo of her musical father in Arlan, guitar player for a local band. Soon she's living on his sofa, hanging out with his girlfriend - having friends for the first time, even. And if Anna's new friends do drugs, read her journal and leave open a few too many bedroom doors, who's to say they aren't real friends? And if Anna has feeling for Arlan, who's to say where her loyalty lies?
During a single summer's worth of gin-soaked days, coloured with longing, Anna rediscovers her sense, shut down since her father's death, and finds that the only way to get free of her past is to embrace it.
