When fourteen-year-old Allie's mother, Mae, mysteriously disappears in the dark waters of the harbour, Allie begrudgingly sets off with Julia, an aunt she barely knows, to stay at the dairy farm where her mother grew up. As the days pass and the heat of the wet season swells, Allie waits for her mother's call, certain that she will reappear. While Julia -- determined to undo the damage her family has inflicted upon the land -- replants the trees of the forest, Allie lurks around the cabin belong-ing to her mother's first love, a man who still lives deep within the valley. But when the truth about Mae's childhood and Allie's mythical father, the balloon man, begins to surface, Allie must come to grips with the lies her mother has told her and the secrets buried within the mud-rich landscape. With gorgeous prose and lush imagery, Sarah Armstrong brings us an absorbing debut about sifting through the complicated stories that shape us and reclaiming them as our own.