"When an accident causes the loss of a treasured vintage pen, Mary Helen Reynolds relives the summer of 1988 ... Fourteen-year-old Mary Helen wants life to stay the same--small, safe, and protected--but her world starts to unravel when cancer strikes her mother. Mary Helen is sent from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, to St. Simons Island, Georgia, to live with her eccentric artist aunt. The island, Mary Helen soon discovers, is surrounded by the marshes made famous by poet Sidney Lanier ..."--Jacket.