Set in modern-day Maine, the story is about a young man (Nick Stahl) who is snaring lobsters the summer before he’s about to head to college to study architecture. He’s also dating a woman (Marisa Tomei) ten years his senior, but the pair seem perfectly happy, and even his successful, upper-middle-class parents (Tom Wilkinson, who plays the town doctor, and Sissy Spacek, who teaches a high school choir group) approve, until the woman’s estranged husband shows up, followed by tragic results.