Twentysomething Ellie thought she was her father's favorite child; she was sure he would leave her his most prized possession, a baseball with which they played catch, and which sat on his desk, as a kind of inspiration: her poet father's most famous poem was called "The Catch." But when her father's will is read, his children, including from other marriages, each receive a meaningful object, except Ellie, who receives a glow-in-the-dark tie rack that she has never seen before. The baseball that inspired her father's work is left to someone with initials no one recognizes, L.M. In her grief, Ellie wonders: Who could have meant more to her father than Ellie? Might it be that mysterious woman she saw slip into the back of the church during her father's funeral? Her job at a D.C. journalism startup and her relationship with a married lover become threatened as Ellie tries to deal with her rage and grief and come to terms with the mysterious man she thought she knew. Determined to try to understand her father's life and to overcome her sense of abandonment, Ellie sets out to track down L.M. In her quest she discovers many startling things about who her father really was and comes to realize the deeper meaning of that baseball, that poem "The Catch," and the many ways life catches us unawares.