The summer that eleven-year-old Eva is picked up on her fourth shoplifting charge, her mother, Miriam, decides to move from Manhattan to a quiet town in upstate New York so they can have a "normal" life. But what Miriam doesn't tell her daughter, or anyone else, is that Eva's stealing scares her for a different reason, one related to a past she has been trying to ignore. As tensions mount between mother and daughter, it is Eva's secret friendship with Burl -- a reclusive beekeeper who lives down the road -- that ultimately helps the two find their way back to each other.