Leslie Chase, a young composer, receives the use of an ocean-side Maine house from her patron so she may complete her first opera. As Leslie struggles with loneliness and winter snowstorms, she meets a handsome but troubled man, Matti, and becomes enmeshed with him and his enigmatic relationship with her benefactor. When three opera singers visit, one of them, Sasha, begins to flirt with her, evoking Leslie's sexual ambivalence and traumatic memories of an affair between her mother and another woman that inspired the choice of her opera's subject-the relationships of Vita Sackville-West with Violet Trefusis and Virginia Woolf. As the emotional spaces between the characters compress, mysteries are exposed that lead to violent conflict.