Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. No one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, but Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.