An environmental journalist in Washington, DC, Rachel has shunned her New England working-class family for years. Divorced and childless in her middle age, she's a true independent spirit with the pain and experience to prove it. Coping with challenges large and small, she thinks her life is in free fall--until she's summoned home to deal with the aftermath of her mother's death. Then things really fall apart. Surrounded by a cast of sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreakingly serious characters--an arriviste sister, an alcoholic brother-in-law and, most importantly, the love of her life recently married to the sister's best friend--Rachel must come to terms with her past, the sorrow she has long buried, and the ghost of the mother who, for better and worse, made her the woman she is.