When Emerson was twelve, she was enamored of her grandmother Amelia and believed that what others saw as eccentricity or mental illness was instead a misunderstood gift. Five years later, hardened by her mother's suicide and worried that she might be destined for a similar fate, Emerson visits Amelia at The Lavender House, a mental health facility for the elderly, to learn more about the enigmatic women in her family who found either magic or madness in response to a world that often seemed too small to contain them. As Amelia's warped fairy tale emerges, buried stories are unearthed, and everything Emerson thinks she knows shifts as she begins to confront her own magical thinking and burgeoning feelings for her best friend.