At Melody Mountain Ranch, the local residents are too busy with home shopping parties, Fundamentalism-Light, and each other’s business to notice their superficially well-constructed houses are literally rotting beneath them. Secret affairs, teen witchcraft, and a power-hungry homeowner’s board have their personal lives deconstructing even faster.
On Wonderland Valley Way, blonde, beautiful, interior decorator Hope Jordan is desperate for a baby. As Hope struggles through the letdown of several unsuccessful fertility treatments, her neighbors Will Pierce-Cohn, a stay-at-home dad and community activist, Frank Griffin, a minister-cum-homeowner’s board president, and Tim Trautman, a soon-to-be father of five, jockey for her attentions.
When Hope inadvertently eats hash-laced brownies at the playground ribbon-cutting gala/Memorial Weekend poolside potluck she falls into the arms of one of her three wanna-be paramours. Maybe all three—she wakes up with only fleeting memories of the evening and what may or may not have transpired. When she discovers she’s pregnant and tries to piece together what happened, with whom, and what to do about it, the homes on her cul-de-sac begin to crack and sink. Hope and her neighbors appear to be stuck in a hell of their own making.