After her brother is killed in the 9/11 attacks, a high-school senior returns to her Hudson Valley childhood home, where she confronts buried secrets and new conflicts with old friends.

SYNOPSIS:

October 2001 in Skerritsville, New York, due north of Manhattan. The town is feeling the effects of the opening days of the War on Terror, but none so much as in the loss of one of its own. Michael O'Connell, Skerritsville High Class of 1993, was part of FDNY and perished in the attacks. His kid sister Claire, eighteen and a high-school senior, now lives at his Prince St. apartment and shuts herself off from the world. Not a word to those who care about her. Not an indication that she'll live.

Claire's best friend Kristin runs track for Skerritsville High and is trying to impress college recruiters. Kristin's identical twin Gillian hides her true self from everyone, scared to come out in a town where everyone knows everyone and everything. Gillian only confides in one person, and Donny is too worried about whether his brother Kenny is going to war to be of much help. There's Becky Robbins, head of the English department at the high school who used to date Michael and play drums in a punk band. Here's Alyssa Feldman, Skerritsville's resident weirdo and target of Claire's incessant bullying as a kid. Everywhere there are lives that intersect, moments built on years lived in close proximity, a town that's ready to go up in smoke at a horrible moment in history, and everyone is asking the same question:

Where is Claire O'Connell?