What is the story about?

This is a story we all experience in a lifetime… becoming our authentic self.

Lily Kaltyk, a shy, only child, raised in a tight-knit Ukrainian-Canadian community in Manitoba, grows into a cautious, lonely woman. As she nears her fortieth birthday, she obsesses about her thwarted dream to study architecture, grieves over the lack of a partner and longs to leave behind a life of poverty shared with her stoic mother.

When an unorthodox proposal offers a different future, she is guardedly hopeful, but soon discovers her new life full of obligations. She worries over Brendan, a delinquent teenage boy who must live with her and becomes frightened by stories told by her colourful, meddlesome neighbour, Dolly Inkpen, who believes Lily’s new home, the “Old Manse,” is haunted by a ghost named Charlotte. When Lily receives a shocking letter from her mother, her life changes forever.

Caught between duty and self-definition, Lily enrolls in an experimental architectural project hoping to find a career path, but in the tangled process, discovers something of even greater value.

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