It's 1977, and change is coming to Rochester, New York. Some changes ---- like the impending decline of the city's major employers, Kodak and Xerox --- will be huge and structural. Others, like the attitude shift toward sex and sexuality, are playing out mostly behind closed doors.

At the beginning of Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's third novel, LAKE EFFECT, the latter change is being spurred along by Nina Larkin's good friend, Bess. Newly divorced and gleefully extolling the benefits of singledom, Bess gifts each of the women in their social group a copy of the newly published (and extremely detailed) THE JOY OF SEX.

"... a kaleidoscopic portrait of a group of people over time who are thrown together by sometimes uncomfortable or painful circumstances but who find new ways of being with each other, with themselves, and in the world they share."

When Nina's teenage daughters, Clara and Bridie, discover the book among their mother's things, they're both fascinated and scandalized. But that's only the beginning. Little do they know that their mother, an excellent cook and a food columnist, has started a clandestine affair with family friend and neighbor Finn Finnegan, a local celebrity and head of a regional grocery chain. To add insult to injury, Finn is also the father of Clara's classmate, Dune, who just happens to be Clara's first boyfriend. So when Nina and Finn run away together for a quickie divorce and remarriage just as a snowstorm is closing in, many lives are upended --- but perhaps Clara's most of all.

Despite being a city, Rochester is just small enough for the whole town to be abuzz with the gossip, especially since it involves such a prominent family. Though Nina and Finn are temporarily driven by lust and new love, they soon discover the numerous implications of their actions both personally and, in Finn's case, professionally. Forced to put aside her dreams of theatrical stardom when a sulky Dune refuses to act alongside her in the school production of Godspell, Clara throws herself into homemaking, picking up where her mother abruptly left off, determined to salvage something resembling a home life for herself, her younger sister and her father.

Sweeney's narrative then fast forwards nearly 20 years to the mid-1990s. When we check in with the Larkin and Finnegan families, some things have changed --- attitudes adjusted, reputations rehabilitated, hatchets buried --- while others haven't quite. Now living in New York City and working as a food stylist for the nascent Food Network, Clara hasn't even come close to forgiving her mother, even if the city of Rochester has come to accept Nina and Finn as important players in the city's philanthropic scene. But when a new family development demands Clara's attention, she is forced to confront events of the past in a new light.

Twenty years is a long time in the life of a family and a culture. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is viewing the drama within its cultural context, of seeing something that was once shocking and disruptive become just…a family, albeit an unconventional one. Much of the novel is told from the perspectives of Nina and, especially, Clara, but several other characters also show readers glimpses of their lives.

The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a group of people over time who are thrown together by sometimes uncomfortable or painful circumstances but who find new ways of being with each other, with themselves, and in the world they share.