It's love with an edge in this sharp tale of would-be urban sophisticates who embark on a mismatched marriage and have a daughter. As the story unfolds, Nissen depicts the relationships and conversations of the well-meaning but slightly neurotic inhabitants of New York with uncanny acumen.

Edwin Anderson and Roz Rosenzweig meet outside Fran Kornblauser's Manhattan apartment in 1970—he is a scrubbed, polite Nebraskan, fresh out of law school and eager to practice civil rights law, while she is a cynical, sexily dressed Jewish legal secretary. After a brief, unlikely courtship, they marry. The newlyweds' first visits to their respective in-laws in Omaha, Nebraska, and Yonkers, New York, only serve to punctuate the differences in their backgrounds. Oblivious, the happy couple plunges into parenthood, but the birth of their daughter Miranda and the passage of time takes its toll on their marriage. Miranda's life epitomizes fast-paced New York City. Spunky and savvy, burying her youth and vulnerability under a mask of sarcasm, Miranda is determined to grow up quickly despite Roz's desire to keep her young. New people—native New Yorkers, and a few non-natives, too—come in and out of Roz's, Miranda's, and Edwin's lives. As the 1970s eventually give way to the 1990s, families change, households reconfigure, and everyone grows a little older and, perhaps, a little wiser.