From a trunk in an old house in Rockport, Massachusetts emerges the yellowed pages of a journal and a clutch of letters. Marianne Parsons, a young mother and the wife of a sea captain, made her first entry in that journal on a spring evening in 1855. Her recorded days revolved easily around her husband, James, and their little son, Henry. She lived an exemplary life, did good works in the village, was dutiful to the demands of an affluent, well-mannered upbringing. All this would come to an end. Under the Linden Tree is the story of a vanished time and a vanished sensibility. Marianne Parsons finds herself faced with a decision she never wanted to make. Now she must struggle against the propriety that once held her in a comfortable embrace. Now she must ask herself questions that her family - and her own past - have not equipped her to answer.