When Char Hawthorne's husband dies unexpectedly, she is left questioning everything she once knew to be true: from the cozy small town life they built together to her relationship with her stepdaughter, who is suddenly not bound to Char in any real way. Untethered explores what bonds truly form a family and how, sometimes, love knows no bounds.

Char Hawthorn has a great life. A freelance editor and college professor married to a wonderful man, and stepmother to a happy, spirited fifteen-year-old daughter in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, she loves her family and the joyful rhythms of work and parenting. But when her husband, Bradley, is killed in a car accident, the “step” in Char’s title suddenly matters a great deal. In the eyes of the law, the “mother” title, and all the rights to daughter Allie, belong to Lindy, Allie’s self-absorbed biological mother, who wants the girl to move to her home in California.

Allie begins to struggle in school and tensions mount between her and Char, though her connection to young Morgan Crew, a ten-year-old girl Allie’s tutored since the fall, seems to keep her grounded. Sadly, Morgan, who was adopted out of foster care after a neglect-filled early childhood, engages in self-harm, making her adoptive parents anxious.

When Morgan disappears, Allie is distraught, and then takes matters into her own hands, taking the family car to Ohio to rescue Morgan, who has been given away to strangers—“rehomed” by her desperate adoptive parents, who feared for their special-needs son. Though Char manages to track the girls down, she must face an irate Lindy, a future without Allie, and the question of Morgan, caught in a terrible crack in the system.