SummaryYears ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left
her daughters
behind. She has since become a famous radio talk-show host
and
newspaper columnist beloved for her moral advice. Her
youngest daughter,
Ruby, is a struggling comedienne who uses her famous mother
as fuel for
her bitter, cynical humor. When the tabloids unearth a
scandalous secret
from Nora's past, their estrangement suddenly becomes
dramatic: Nora is
injured in an accident and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a
fortune to write
a tell-all about her mother. Under false pretenses, Ruby
returns home to
take care of the woman she hasn't spoken to for almost a
decade.
Nora insists they retreat to Summer Island in the San
Juans, to the lovely
old house on the water where Ruby grew up, a place filled
with childhood
memories of love and joy and belonging. There Ruby is also
reunited with
her first love and his brother. Once, the three of them had
been best friends,
inseparable. Until the summer that Nora had left and
everyone's hearts had
been broken. . . .
What began as an expose evolves, as Ruby writes, into an
exploration of
her family's past. Nora is not the woman Ruby has hated all
these years.
Witty, wise, and vulnerable, she is desperate to reconcile
with her daughter.
As the magazine deadline draws near and Ruby finishes what
has begun to
seem to her an act of brutal betrayal, she is forced to
grow up and at last to
look at her mother-and herself-through the eyes of a woman.
And she
must, finally, allow herself to love.
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