It focuses on a young couple, both New Yorkers, who decide to move to the fictional town of Hibernia to live and work in the Edmund Wright Historical House.
Nick Beron is a musician who works as an assistant editor in New York City and lives with his girlfriend, Hannah Rampe, in Astoria.
When Hannah is laid off from her job, working at a museum, the couple enter the worst period in their relationship, constantly fighting.
After a particular fight in which Hannah wants to apply for a job as a museum director in Hibernia in upstate New York, Nick leaves their apartment, believing they are broken up.
[2] The New York Journal of Books praised it as a novel "that will leave the reader thoughtful and perhaps linger long in the memory.