Cicadas chatter feverishly outside as a middle-aged architect startlingly awakes from a crippling night-terror. Returning to his childhood home for the first time in seventeen years when his mother dies, Kip must grapple with the ghosts of his past, his hostile and jobless brother who never managed to move out, and the financially crushing debts now left behind by his parents. Set in an aging, former steel town in southwestern Pennsylvania, Kip is joined by his noticeably younger girlfriend, Phoebe. She has come to assist with the funeral arrangements but discovers quickly that she’s in for much more than she bargained for. Kip’s brother, Ethan, won’t enter the bedroom where their mother died; and tensions rise when the sanctity of that space is abruptly invaded. Secrets buried deep are exposed. Old wounds are made fresh. And sibling rivalries scale new heights with potentially frightening consequences. Just as the town of Monessen has found a way to reinvent itself beyond the long-gone glory days of its Steel City heritage, so must two brothers... whose relationship has rusted, after years of neglect.
