In Houston in 1969, vulnerable and unformed Hope Fairman, wife, mother, indifferent housekeeper, is about to confront domestic disaster. Clay, her straight-arrow engineer husband, is going to split for another woman, leaving her the two kids (for a time...), the neglected house, the Cadillac she has never felt up to driving, and a life to be rebuilt from emotional ground zero.

How Hope does just that in the aftermath of divorce and a devastating child-custody battle - with the help of a richly drawn cast of characters from the counterculture Unitarian Church, free school, and commune she embraces - forms the matter of this funny and dramatic book.

Here is Alex, the seductive minister with the roving eye and the Esalen-hatched insights; Chloe, close friend, newly minted lawyer, fierce feminist; Fern, another good friend and a walking compendium of hippie garb and attitude; Gideon, lover, sensualist, one-time child prodigy on the violin; and Frederick, the troubled young black boy whose salvation becomes one of Hope's passions.

As these and many other characters shuffle in and out of Hope's life, as she takes up photography and learns to handle the Cadillac, she will change and grow in ways that are surprising, touching, and utterly convincing.