When eleven year old Katy Sue loses her mother, Edna,to meningitis, she and her family must adjust to life without her. The rural farm in the 1940’s provides a natural backdrop that is rhythmic and routine — and unforgiving, even when a family member dies. The house’s haunted emptiness is only filled when Aunt Katherine, Edna’s youngest sister, comes to the family’s aid, as does Jake, an ornithologist and long-time family friend. As Katy Sue, the youngest of the three children, watches Ingrid take on her mother’s domestic tasks and Ben help Papa on the farm, she struggles to define her place in the family and understand what the loss of her mother means for her now. With the guidance of her teacher Mrs. Breton, Katy Sue begins to contemplate the shape of her family and the farm through drawing, a process that allows her to accept her father’s soon-to-be wife, the farm life without her mother, and eventually, her own role within the family.