The night-blooming cereus is a gangly, ugly plant, justifying its existence by producing an annual blossom of ethereal beauty and scent that lasts only one night. Like the flower, Garnet Grant exists in a grim, narrow world, bound by her mother's whims and grudges and her family's hardscrabble survival in rural Kentucky over a century ago. Garnet has dreams, though, and hopes, and the determination to bloom however she can.

A passenger dies on the Barcelona-Cincinnati flight. When EMTs and Customs officials suspect biological terrorism, the Cincinnati Airport is locked down. Some passengers have already cleared and exited, but the remaining ones as well as TSA and other airport employees, Customs officers, and one airport policeman are flown to an abandoned Army post for quarantine. Just before they take his phone, the policeman, Luke Davies, calls his wife Maggie and tells her to take their son to his parent...

After his wife's death, artist Keith Owen realizes that the web of lies he's woven for decades might be shredded. He's hidden, lied, and led a reclusive life so he could paint with freedom. And all of that is catching up with him. His grown children, Kinley and Brendan have suffered from their father's idiosyncratic life. Kinley fears committment to a musician she loves. Brendan is still looking for the perfect family in a toxic marriage. But as the truth unravels, they stand to suffer eve...