Suzanne Blume has survived two marriages, financially supported two children through college and her teaching duties at a Boston university allow her just enough time to take on important legal cases and spend time with her closest friend. Life in her forties has also yielded some unexpected pleasures - she is enjoying her first sexual relationship in years. . . But her neat, buttoned-up life starts to unravel when her daughter Elena returns home, angry and unemployed. Can mother and daughter rebuild their fragmented relationship? And what of Suzanne's own mother? Having devoted her life to men and politics with passion, fiercely independent Beverley is now coping with the effects of a stroke and is also forced to share Suzanne's home and rely on the conventional daughter she has never had much time for . . .