When Tom decides to write the history of his artistic family, he finds himself embroiled in the strange situation at Coulter Valley, the family's old home, where elderly aunts Sophie and Bernice still live.
Artists Tom and Edith, young Tom's great-grandparents, raised their four children as 'a family dedicated to art', isolated from the adverse influences of the outside world, and young Tom's research gradually uncovers the results of this dedicated, rigid attitude.
Will his investigations end in tragedy? Or will family soidarity triumph?