It is another summer of transition for the Howells family — Dinah, Martin, and their children, the characters whom Robb Forman Dew so memorably introduced in her National Book Award-winning first novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death. With the impending departure of eighteen-year-old David for his first year at Harvard, Dinah struggles against a nearly paralyzing sense of loss. At the same time, the arrival in town of an earnest and naively manipulative young woman begins to expose the surprisingly fragile construction of the Howellses' determinedly fortunate lives.