Jan, an itinerant male nurse from Denmark, takes a new job with Mrs. A, a terminally ill Manhattan woman raising her parentless thirteen-year-old grandson, Gil. Spending the summer by the shore, the emotionally reserved Jan finds himself oddly cast as a mentor to Gil in having to prepare the sensitive boy for life with his cousins in Florida after his grandmother's death.

A mother and child plant a rainbow of colors in their flower garden. Lois Ehlert's vibrant, stylized artwork brings to life the cyclical excitement of planning, planting and picking flowers in a garden.