Following his stateside return from Iraq, Jack Armstrong, a literal and figurative Jack-of-All-Trades in his civilian life, came down with an undiagnosed illness, he sent home from the hospital to the care of his wife, Lizzie Armstrong, in what were expected to be his final days. Instead, it was Lizzie who passed suddenly in a traffic accident, Jack miraculously fully recovering following. Jack has decided to take their two children, fifteen year old Mikki and young adolescent Cory, on what was Lizzie's planned family summer vacation to her hometown of Channing, it to be spent at what Lizzie had always considered her "palace", her parents' recreational property, a beachside cottage, now a rental, complete with a lighthouse. The fact that the three of them, upon their arrival, find that it is not the palace that Lizzie had described but a rundown property only exacerbates the issues with which they all are dealing beyond their general grief. Jack is struggling to be both father and mother to the kids, while needing to deal with Lizzie's mother, Bonnie O'Toole. While Jack and Bonnie never had the best of in-law relationships, they have the added issue of Bonnie's concerns for the children's welfare without their mother, she who has become overly protective in not wanting to lose any more children. Besides going through puberty, Mikki is constantly angry, largely directed at her father, more in her own unspoken fear that he will becomes sick again. In making the necessary repairs to the cottage, Jack decides to fix the non-functioning lighthouse in Lizzie's memory. In the process, Jack is guided by a visible manifestation only to him of Lizzie's spirit. The presence of that spirit may provide a complication as Jack seems to be making a connection with restaurateur Jenna Fontaine, who moved to Channing four years ago with her now mid-teen son, Liam, to escape a crumbling marriage, those connections which seem to be developing also at the next generation between Mikki and Liam.
