The Summer of Songbirds

Six-year-old Daphne Miller arrives at Camp Holly Springs, an all-girls summer camp in North Carolina, in June 1998. Her aunt June, the camp's director, suspects that Daphne's mother, Melanie, has relapsed after seven years of sobriety, having allowed the child to fly alone while relocating with a new husband. At camp, Daphne meets Lanier Bradley and Mary Stuart, two other first-year Songbirds, the cabin group for the youngest campers. She takes each girl by the hand and leads them off to explore, beginning a lifelong friendship.

Twenty-four years later, the three women are 30 and still inseparable. Daphne is a solo business lawyer in the coastal town of Cape Carolina and a single mother to four-year-old Henry. She has been sober for seven years after struggling with substance use in her early twenties. Her world shifts when client Wendy Carlson accuses Bryce Jenkins, Lanier's fiancé and a local contractor, of owing nearly $100,000 for unpaid work. Bryce confesses to Daphne that he has been shuffling money between projects and owes vendors close to a million dollars. His mother, who runs a media company called McCann Media, has agreed to bail him out on the condition he come work for her. Bryce warns that if Daphne breaks attorney-client privilege to tell Lanier, he will report her to the bar, jeopardizing her career and Henry's stability.

Meanwhile, June wrestles with the camp's dire finances. Registration and donations have plummeted since the pandemic shut the camp for an entire summer, and a developer keeps raising his offer for the 350-acre waterfront property. June, who bought the camp 26 years ago with her inheritance after her parents died in a car accident, agonizes over whether to sell.

Daphne has also been secretly reconnecting with Huff, Lanier's older brother and her ex-boyfriend. Seven years earlier, Daphne broke up with Huff while struggling with substance use, partly at Lanier's urging. After a car crash in which Daphne, under the influence, dislocated Huff's shoulder, Lanier demanded she choose between sobriety and the relationship. Daphne left Huff, detoxed at camp, and rebuilt her life, but neither ever stopped loving the other.

At Mary Stuart's wedding, Huff and Daphne's chemistry is visible to everyone. Lanier lies to Huff, telling him Daphne and Steven, Henry's father, are still together. That night, Daphne and Huff reconnect, and she reveals she has not been with Steven for years, exposing the lie. Mary Stuart confides that she does not think Bryce is right for Lanier, giving Daphne the idea of steering Lanier away from Bryce through subtle sabotage rather than breaking privilege.

Daphne proposes holding Lanier's bachelorette at Camp Holly Springs, hoping the setting will rekindle Lanier's connection to Rich McNabb, the director of adjacent Camp Rock Springs and Lanier's first love. Rich and Lanier fell in love as teenage counselors but broke apart when Rich took the blame for Lanier's underage drinking and was fired. Lanier, overwhelmed by shame, ghosted him. During the bachelorette sail, the wind dies and Rich arrives to tow them back, leaving Lanier visibly shaken. That night, June tearfully reveals this will be Holly Springs's last summer: The camp needs at least $650,000, and she has spent everything. Daphne sobs that camp is her home, the one place she felt safe during a childhood marked by her mother's addiction and her father's neglect.

She wakes her friends before dawn with a plan: a massive alumni fundraising campaign, grants for scholarship campers, and a family camp weekend. Mary Stuart contributes PR expertise, landing coverage in Sea & Sky magazine and launching a "Holly Springs Lemonade Stands" campaign that generates funds and national attention. Daphne's paralegal, Finn, writes grants that produce a sold-out summer season.

Over the following weeks, Daphne and Huff deepen their secret relationship while Lanier and Bryce's engagement fractures. The first-ever family camp draws 100 families. Rich volunteers his facilities and works alongside Lanier, rekindling old feelings. By the weekend's end, combined fundraising exceeds $550,000, still roughly $93,000 short. During a thunderstorm, Rich and Lanier take shelter in the sailing hut, where she delivers the apology she has carried for over a decade. They sleep together, and Lanier knows her feelings for Rich have never changed.

That evening, Lanier confesses to her friends, but then discovers a love note from Huff that fell from Daphne's pocket. She erupts, accusing Daphne of bringing chaos into Huff's life and invoking Daphne's addiction history. The accusation strikes at Daphne's deepest fear: that she is destined to repeat her mother's mistakes. Mary Stuart defends Daphne, pointing out seven years of sobriety. Daphne flees in tears. Bryce arrives at camp just as Rich comes to find Lanier; Rich sees them together and walks away, stricken.

Devastated, Daphne drives to Huff's house and breaks up with him, believing she must choose Henry's stability over her own happiness. Huff delivers an ultimatum: If she walks away now, it is forever. He then confronts Lanier at her bookstore, revealing he and Daphne were planning to marry. Their mother, Paula, tells Lanier plainly that Huff does not need his sister managing his love life.

June rejects the developer's final offer, refusing to sell despite the shortfall. She and Daphne have a frank conversation about how both have been hiding from life because of Melanie's legacy, and June decides to move to Great-Aunt Gracie's beach house during the off-season, the first time in 26 years she will live outside camp.

As wedding invitations are about to be mailed, Daphne resolves to tell Lanier the truth, choosing her friend's well-being over her career. She arrives at the mailbox screaming for Lanier to stop, but Wendy Carlson appears with police officers and Bryce is arrested for writing $80,000 in bad checks. Finn reveals he tipped Wendy off about the time and location, sparing Daphne from having to break privilege. A flashback reveals the deepest bond between the friends: When they were 16, Lanier staged a fire in the house of Daphne's neglectful father, Ray, who had an alcohol addiction. The fire created the pretext for Daphne's removal from his custody and placement with the Bradley family.

Lanier orchestrates amends, luring Daphne to the camp softball field, the site of Daphne's first kiss with Huff. Daphne arrives expecting Lanier but instead finds Huff. Lanier appears and delivers a sincere apology, acknowledging that Daphne is nothing like her mother. Huff drops to one knee, surrounded by friends and family, and proposes. Daphne says yes. That night, she and June discuss the wound between them: June's failure to fight for custody after Melanie died. June confesses she was in too dark a place to raise a child, and Daphne forgives her.

An Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) approval arrives, granting $250,000 after Finn resubmitted June's botched application. The loan closes the remaining financial gap, saving Holly Springs. Lanier breaks off her engagement and drives to Rock Springs to tell Rich she loves him, but Rich, still hurt, rejects her, tired of being her backup plan.

On opening day of camp, Rich sails over from Rock Springs. Daphne and Mary Stuart leave Lanier alone with him. Rich admits he tried to stop loving her but has been miserable. They kiss on the dock and agree to rebuild trust slowly. That night, June leads a midnight zip line run, jumping off the platform unafraid for the first time, ready to embrace life beyond camp.

Seven years later, Daphne, pregnant with her fourth child, watches her six-year-old daughter Melly, named for Melanie, along with Mary Stuart's daughter Smith and Lanier and Rich's daughter Nina, whisper secrets in the Songbird Cabin. Steven and Huff have become close friends and coparent Henry seamlessly. June splits her year between Cape Carolina and camp. As the three little girls run off hand in hand, Daphne sees the echo of herself, Lanier, and Mary Stuart 31 years earlier and whispers the camp's farewell as a new summer begins.