A portrait artist lives along a road built of the pips and stones from orchard fruit. He watches the other residents come and go and paints portraits of them, imagining their lives. Each portrait, each story, comes together to form a picture of Cherrystone Lane and reveals who gave the painter a black eye and how the most recent resident was guided to misadventure.

David L Hume has written a gentle, compelling history in a series of short vignettes of the addresses that make up Cherrystone Lane.