At age ninety-two, Ivadoile Spears is in the grip of early dementia. Alone except for a cat named Rose and an old cedar box filled with photographs, Ivadoile is stubbornly set on living out her remaining years in the now-vacant Tides Inn on Cape Breton Island. The only child of cold and withdrawn parents and widowed by the age of twenty-eight, a younger Ivadoile turned the Tides Inn into a retreat for the broken-spirited. But she had not been prepared for Ambrose Kane - a southerner who entered, bringing a cold wind in his dirty shirt.