“When people see tears, they stop listening to your hands or your words or anything else you have to say. And it doesn’t matter if the tears are angry or sad, frightened or frustrated. All they see is a girl crying.”

Olivia Prior has been at the Merilance School for girls as long as she can remember. She doesn’t know why she was left at the orphanage with nothing but her mother’s rambling journal. Olivia does not speak; she uses sign language, which makes communication more difficult.

One day a car comes for Olivia because of a letter written by her uncle calling her home to a mansion called Gallant. Once she is there, no one knows who wrote the letter, as her uncle has been dead for years.

Olivia’s cousin Matthew is not happy to have her, but soon the two of them are on a mysterious and bizarre adventure of family history. It all soon unravels into madness, just like her mother’s
journal.