Amanda and her husband, David, are raising their son and daughter in the close-knit community of ex-pats on Grand Cayman Island. Their firstborn, Sally, has always listened to her heart, deciding at age four that she would rather be called Clover and then, a few years later, falling in love with her best friend, James. At the same time that Clover falls in love with James, Amanda realizes that she has fallen out of love with David, and that she is interested in someone else. While Amanda tries to navigate the new path her heart is leading her down, Clover finds, much to her dismay, that James seems to be growing away from her. And when they leave the island for boarding school--James to England and Clover to Scotland--she feels she may have lost him for good.