In this novel, the author her remarkable storytelling skills and emotional insight to the lives of modern women, considering the precarious balance of marriage and career, motherhood and friendship. The seaside town of Gloucester, on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, is a place where the smell of the ocean lingers in the air. Fifty-nine-year-old Kathleen Levine, a longtime resident, is graceful, maternal, and steady, a devoted children's librarian, a convert to Judaism, the mother of two grown sons. But when she is diagnosed with breast cancer, which killed her sister fifteen years earlier, her life is thrown into turmoil. Frightened, lonesome for a woman to talk to, burdened by secrets, she meets Joyce Tabachnik and a once-in-a-lifetime friendship is born. Forty-two-year-old Joyce, restless and funny, a freelance writer with literary aspirations, has just bought a small house in Gloucester, where she hopes to write as well as vacation with her family. Like Kathleen, Joyce is at a fragile place in her life: with her twelve-year-old daughter becoming increasingly testy and distant, she's also feeling a distinct lack of connection to her husband. A mutual appreciation of books, humor, and the beauty of the natural world brings the two women together for long walks along Good Harbor beach. Slowly, they begin to share their personal histories and to realize how much they can learn from each other. Ultimately they wrestle with some startling secrets, and help each other to confront scars left by old emotional wounds. With her own trademark wisdom and humor, the author considers the nature, strength, and necessity of adult female friendship in this novel, a rich and moving book about the tragedy of loss, the insidious nature of family secrets, and, ultimately, the redemptive power of friendship.