At the center of this novel is the story of a daughter looking after her mother, who's been admitted to a nursing home after a stroke landed her in the hospital. All her mother wants is pain medicine and to go home. This delicate situation serves as a jumping-off point for Rudan to wander freely through memories of her parents, her husband, friends, and a daughter of her own. Out of these elements, Rudan weaves together an unsentimental, unflinching story about the difficult love that exists between parents and children, the inability of people ever to say the right thing, the grotesque--yet universal--process of growing old, and the perverse mysteries of love and death.