For great-grandmother Rose, who emigrated to Detroit with her young husband, life offered few choices-you worked or you starved-and each day was taken up with the business of survival. Helen, Rose's daughter, stayed close to her family and to the old ways, but her daughter Ginger-wayward, clever, modern- makes a bid for freedom and fun in the Arizona sunshine, only to find her dreams wrecked by the alcoholism which ultimately destroys her marriage and drives her daughter Amy half a world away. The story moves deftly back and forth between the women, revealing secrets kept hidden, love unspoken. Rose yearns for passion, for richness; Helen longs for her daughter, but all Ginger ever sees is disapproval. Finally it is Amy, the youngest, who finds the strength to reconcile past and present, to carry her heritage as a gift rather than a burden. This is a novel about women's lives, about the forces that shape them and the compromises they have to make.