When Claire glances at her hand resting against her kitchen counter and sees her skin is the exact shade as the Formica, she realizes that she has become indistinguishable from her kitchen. Moments later she announces to her husband, a harmless but hyper-literal entomologist that she is leaving.

As a crossword puzzle writer, Claire has made a profession of finding definitions; now, she must face the fact that she has lost her own. By the end of the next day, she is heading to a small town on the coast of Ireland to visit her sister, Noelle, a college dropout she hasn't seen since their mother's death three years ago. What follows is the journey of a daughter facing the truth of her family, a wife admitting her marriage wasn't perfect, a linguist rediscovering the beauty and possibility of words.