Susannah Suffolk can't stop thinking about her first kiss, which took place on the shore of Walloon Lake. She can't stop thinking about that boy, and her childhood years spent growing up there. Foggy with memories of her mother's tirades, the sound of a pot being repeatedly banged on the kitchen counter, watching her meals fly out the door at her mother's hand, and punishment that came with pain, Susannah struggles to defend her most public court case while she returns to Walloon Lake to arrange a funeral for her mother. Though she has since moved far away, and created a life for herself, her...

After poet Allie Young turned down her live-in boyfriend's sixth proposal, she knew she needed a change. Fleeing her hometown of Canton, Michigan, she has spent a year in Paris working at a literary magazine, and toying with her poetry manuscript. When the magazine closes it's doors, she realizes she must return. With no other options, she moves in with her widowed sixty-seven-year-old mother, who seems to live her life based upon sound bites from popular daytime talk shows and women's magazines, and who has embarked upon a rigorous dating life in Allie's absence. Floundering, and unable to...