Young artist Michelle Shepherd has built success for herself on the foundations of an erratic and sometimes violent childhood—all while balancing the care of her elderly father and his expat Vietnam war buddies. Michelle’s father begins drinking and making risky, possibly criminal choices just as she unexpectedly falls in love with a theater director named Celeste—two situations for which she has little adult experience and few skills. When grisly evidence of a crime washes up beneath her remote cabin home, Michelle is convinced of her father’s guilt and is forced to a reckoning with family secrets—some she’s kept from others, and some she’s kept from herself. An open door to the past opens up surprising possibilities but also a minefield of difficult choices. Will Michelle brave those choices, or retreat into the safety of the familiar? Shepherd’s Derelict is a portrait of a flawed found family and the sacrifices we make for love.