Nora Breen has left her Carmelite monastery after 30 years, in large part to find out what happened to Frieda Brogan, a young woman who had intended to bcome a sister, but whose health issues had forced her out. Frieda had taken up residence in a rather rundown boarding house called Gulls Nest, writing regularly to Nora until her letters abruptly stopped. Nora took what little stipend she had and is staying in Frieda's old room at the same boarding house.
There are a handful of other residents, plus the requisite crabby housekeeper (with horrible cooking), along with Helena, the owner, who defers to the housekeeper, always has headaches, and has a small wild child who won't speak (hmm, connected?). There is an old puppeteer and a secretive photographer, as well as a young married couple. The mystery of what happened to Frieda gets shelved a bit when a resident is found dead in an outbuilding. Nora tries to get the local detective to see that he may have been murdered, but this is a handful of years after WWII, and the local thought is that it's not uncommon for former soldiers to commit suicide.
Nora is a determined woman who is not going to back down to anyone, whether it's an uncooperative desk sergent, the detective who sees things differently, or the local womanizer. When even more bad things happen, will they ever find out what's really going on? Everyone, even Nora, has secrets. For a slow starting novel, the pace picks up quickly and the book is hard to put down.
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