Dora Chedwick is in a bad way. At age 28, she has lost her boyfriend, her job as an art teacher, and her uterus. To further complicate her life, she inherits a Victorian-style mansion in Northern California, just south of the Oregon border which she initially wants nothing to do with. To assuage her hurt and anger, she opens the house as a refuge for disenfranchised women like herself: an ex-Iraqi war combatant, an abused wife out for vengeance, a vagabond transgender musician, a struggling young novelist, and a disgruntled, out-of-work master chef. How the six women manage to coexist in the wake of a brutal murder and the ceaseless effort of a notorious land baron to take possession of Dora's property forms the basis of this novel. Each woman's life will be put to the test. Not all rise to the occasion.