Sisters Natalie and Alice Kessler were close until adolescence wrenched them apart. Natalie is a headstrong, manipulative beauty; Alice is a dreamer who loves books and birds. During a lakeside summer holiday, they sit for a family portrait by struggling young painter Thomas Bayber. By summer's end, three lives are shattered. Decades later, Bayber, now a reclusive, world-renowned artist, unveils a never-before-seen work, Kessler Sisters. Bayber asks Dennis Finch, an art history professor, and Stephen Jameson, an eccentric young art authenticator, to sell the painting for him. That task becomes more complicated when the artist requires that they first locate Natalie and Alice, who seem to have vanished.