At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her.

"To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw--and felt--what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person's deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing ... The adults, knowing better, knew nothing....

A tragic local mystery from the past is blown wide open when a girl from the poor side of town infiltrates a group of reckless, wealthy boys and uncovers more than she could have imagined. Everyone in Tenney's Harbor, Maine, knows about the Garrison tragedy, when a house fire killed four of the five family members. Fingers point at Pearl Haskins' father, who was the caretaker of the property, but Pearl doesn't believe it. Pearl's future never held...