The murders of the Hope family are now a song heard in schoolyards – but when they happened, on a blood-soaked night in 1929, they shocked the coast of Maine. Although most people assume that seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible for the murders, the police were never able to prove it. Lenora denied her guilt after the murders but beyond that, she has never spoken publicly about it – nor has she left the mansion where the massacre took place.
Now it is 1983, and Kit McDeere arrives at the decaying Hope’s End to take care of Lenora – the previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. 

At seventy, confined to a wheelchair, Lenora can no longer speak after several strokes and her only way to communicate with Kit is an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses the typewriter to make an enticing offer: to tell her everything.

As Kit helps Lenora write down the events that led to the massacre, it becomes clear that many things have remained hidden. But when new details come to light about the departure of her predecessor, Kit begins to suspect that Lenora may not be telling the whole truth – and that the seemingly harmless woman she is caring for might be much more dangerous than she first thought.