"Anna Riggs Duffy is a woman painfully out of touch with her own needs. Married one year out of high school to an ambitious trial lawyer and pregnant two months later, Anna is living the life her mother envisioned for her, one of comfort and convenience.".

""No accidents, Anna, you better remember that, there are absolutely no accidents," her mother says. Anna and her husband George (joined shortly by Anna's mother) move into a grand house less than a block off St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, and Anna gives birth to twins George Jr. and Gregor. If they are in most ways identical, the twins are also each other's doppelgangers. George is born physically perfect - and mean.

Gregor: big-hearted and sweet-natured, has a chromosomal glitch that gave him blunted limbs, stumps without hands or feet." "Then one day there is a tragic accident in the backyard pool and Anna can save only one of the twins."--BOOK JACKET.