In 1909, Ivy’s drive to be free of her rigid upbringing in an upper class family takes her to a dirty bar where she and the nervously handsome Elias DiCello start a family by accident. As Ivy wrestles with her freedom from the family that disowned her, she boards an ill-fated ship with the man she’s come to love and the child they chose to keep. 

In 1935, quiet and compliant Jolene Kelley has been raised to provide for her temperamental mother through a marriage of means, but a faint suspicion lurks deep inside that her mother is keeping something from her. As Jolene reconciles the stories she’s been told her whole life with the ones she discovers, she must decide what she really wants to know and where to put her trust.

As these stories weave through half a century, family secrets give way to deep truths about love and loss and what is truly unsinkable.