Harry Tabor is about to be named Man of the Decade. Gathering together in Palm Springs for the celebration are his wife, Roma, and their children: Phoebe, Camille and Simon. But immediately, cracks begin to appear in this smooth façade: Simon hasn’t been sleeping through the night, Camille can’t decide what to do with her life, and Phoebe is a little too cagey about her new boyfriend. Roma knows her children are hiding things. What she doesn’t know --- what none of them know --- is that Harry is suddenly haunted by the long-buried secret that drove him to relocate his young family to the California desert. As the ceremony nears, the family members are forced to confront the falsehoods upon which their lives are built.

Joan Ashby is a brilliant and intense literary sensation acclaimed for her explosively dark and singular stories. When she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she is stunned by Martin’s delight, his instant betrayal of their pact (“work is paramount, absolutely no children”). She then makes a fateful, selfless decision to embrace her unintentional family. Challenged by raising two precocious sons, it is decades before she finally completes her masterpiece novel. Poised to reclaim the spotlight, to resume the intended life she gave up for love, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportion forces her to question every choice she has made.