People come in and out of your life by the seasons. The mistakes you make are yours to own. The ones you've lost are lost forever. Failed marriage? Difficult childhood? The traumas of war? Charles Seares didn't get it right the first time. Now, like a master puppeteer, Charles secretly guides the lives of a small band of misfits and lost souls. Pulling strings and moving pieces, he recreates in them the mistakes he made in himself, then he fixes them one by one. Each of them none the wiser they ever moved across his checker board.