This is not an easy book to summarize so I will suggest only the bare bones of an outline. The novel starts innocently enough with a kiss, after a birthday party in California. This simple act leads to two shattered marriages, the separation of two families, the abandoned spouses and the fifty year story of the six kids, their bouncing back and forth between parents, their adult lives and finally, their secret, the differing accounts of the death of their thirteen year old brother, Calvin, which tears the families apart. We listen to many points of views, of both kids and parents and the story of their family is eventually retold by Franny's lover, a failed novelist, to the dismay of all. It sounds like a mess and it does not have much of a plot but it's readable and a few of the characters, like Franny come to life. The novel fuses both the present with past which Patchett understands we can never escape. It was a National Book Award nominee.
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