Thirty-year-old Theresa Pellikaan is typical of the wealthy middle class - she is married to a successful man and lives in an apparently sleepy, yet powerful, rich village. She works in a gallery. When her former schoolmate Ruth Ackermann, brought up in the same village, makes waves with an international bestseller, no one mentions her achievement, even in the book club. Theresa begins to wonder why. It can't only be because it's not 'literature'. It emerges there is a dark secret in the village. Every member of the book club has a reason to keep quiet and Ruth Ackerman's novel threatens to unravel the past, with devastating results. Unable to cope with the silence, Theresa investigates, no matter the consequences.