At the end of 2019, Matisse Reddick returns to the high country only to spin back into a younger self. It happens in the way of all children who enter the places that made them—immediately, violently. She is slapped with her childhood nickname, 'Muddy', and the dispassionate, unanchored identity she has spent years cultivating begins to strip away.
Muddy has returned for one summer to care for La Cuccia, the property of her childhood neighbour, Nuria. The old Italian artist is the only person she has remained in contact with since the 2003 fires took both the Reddicks’ home and Nuria’s husband, Lu. Muddy’s plan is clinical: work a physical role eradicating willow trees on the river, run in the mountains, and avoid the 'muck' of the town—the polarising politics and the ghosts of a past she thought she had outrun. She has no intention of becoming involved with her estranged family or her first crush, Trout, a man who has become quite enigmatic since they were children.
But as the weather warms, she finds herself inevitably entangled in the lives of new and old friends, romance, the landscape, family feuds, and a familiar, looming threat that unearths devastating memories within the town.
Suddenly, as the fire threatens to take it all, Muddy realises that she has something very real to lose.