Disillusioned with academic life, Addy Quick just wants to finish graduate school and get on with Doing Important Things. When she moves back home for the summer to finish her dissertation, she realizes that living with her anxious mother (and her constant refrain of "what will people think") is not going to be easy. Surrounded by the daily dramas of her parents, her sister Lacey, and Lacey's girlfriend Asia, it becomes increasingly difficult for Addy to focus.

But it's a letter in her grandmother's papers that really gets her off track: her great-aunt was fired from the...