At fifty-seven, Julia Ames is living an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination toward self-sabotage and prickly alienation, she has found herself with a husband she loves, two happy children, and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs. When she bumps into an old friend that she hasn't spoken to in years--a friend who almost ended her marriage decades prior--Julia finds herself reexamining her supposedly happy life. Compounded with a bombshell announcement from her son and her daughter's impending departure for college, this chance meeting threatens to send Julia spinning out of control.

Daunted by a looming empty nest, Julia becomes consumed with her checkered past--and with the chaos of her present. She grapples with a complicated new daughter-in-law, the reappearance of her own estranged mother, and the forbidden allure of rekindling a relationship that was once both her lifeline and her downfall. The novel follows Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months as well as the fifty-plus years that preceded them, from her chaotic childhood in Chicago to her fraught early days of marriage and motherhood. SAME AS IT EVER WAS ultimately examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman's life and asks what it takes to form--and keep--a family.