The small town of Tumble Tree, Texas, is known for two things: the blistering desert heat and The Memory House, where folks come from all over to have Lucy's family erase their heartaches and tragic memories. Lucy's been begging Dad to let her unburden folks since the day she learned why there were strangers lined up on their front porch. So the afternoon he lets her practice on him to try her hand at memory-taking, she's overjoyed. Except something isn't right—the memory won't come loose. Then Lucy wakes up with a bruised knee, a pocketful of desert sand, and no memory of what happened. So when Marco Warman comes to her with a crazy story, she listens. He claims Lucy's dad stole memories from folks working at the mines, breaking the cardinal rule of memory-taking: take only what you're given. As Marco and Lucy realize their own memories might have been affected, they team up to fill in the missing pieces and figure out what's really happening in their town.