Alice Adrift is an intimate family drama about loss and recovery, coupling and uncoupling, and a child caught in the turmoil. 

It's the late '90s. The Fishers—Alice, David and their two sons, Tobias and Jeremiah—live in the upper Northwest quadrant of Washington DC, home to an urbane mix of journalists, academics and professionals. Alice is a composer and music professor. Her husband is an architect of some note. The economy is booming. Life is good. But their seemingly perfect existence is shattered when Jeremiah, their youngest, dies of an unidentifiable illness. 

In the years that follow, Alice and David seem to lose their bearings. When Toby appears to be struggling, they move him to an alternative school with a baffling curriculum ("They don't even teach reading, Mom.") and a peculiar set of rules ("Absolutely no television!"). Alice doesn't seem to fit in, but David is drawn to everything about the place, including, Alice eventually realizes, one of Toby's teachers, the striking woman with the long, tangled red hair. 

Not long after David moves out of the house, a group of young men move in next door, ingratiating themselves to Alice. She finds herself attracted to one of them, which sets her further off-kilter. How will she find her way back? How will Toby emerge from all this disruption? And what on earth will happen to David?