Alexandra (Sasha) Schwank

In the opening of the book, Astrid Strick – a 68-year-old widow – witnesses the sudden death of Barbara Baker, whom she has known, if not necessarily liked, for forty years. A speeding school bus struck Barbara just as Astrid was heading to a hair salon in her picturesque Hudson Valley town of Clapham.

Barbara’s death loosens something inside Astrid, which compels her to mend relationships with her three grown children and reveal a secret she has been keeping from them. Many years after her husband died, she began quietly seeing her hairdresser, Birdie Gonzales. As she realizes there is no more time to waste, Astrid decides to stop living her life in fear of what others might think, and come out to her children.

This revelation brings out different emotions in herself and her children, as Astrid begins to reevaluate her past and realizes that she may not have been the mother she thought she was to her kids – Elliot, Porter and Nicky – who are now in their 30s and 40s. She thinks about all the mistakes she had made – the big and small ones – of which she may not even be aware.

As Porter, a goat farmer, prepares to become a mother herself – on her own, with the assistance of a sperm donor – she mulls over how she will deliver the news to Astrid.

“She (Astrid) knew how to get stains out of white shirts. She could name all the plants in her garden and identify trees and birds. She could bake everything from scratch. But she did not invite intimacy the way that Porter had observed in other mothers, the kind who would let their children sleep in their bed after a bad dream or get their hair wet in a swimming pool. Astrid had always existed – both before and after her husband died – in an orderly way. She had rules, and the proper clothing for any weather.”

Meanwhile, Nicky, who had starred in one movie in college, which became a cult classic, now has a teenage daughter of his own, Cecilia, and is living in Brooklyn. She chooses to move to Clapham to stay with Astrid, after encountering issues with friends at school.

As Nicky struggles with his decision to avoid Cecilia, rather than help her confront and deal with her problems, Elliot, a real estate developer, is dealing with issues of his own. Spurred by Astrid’s discouraging remark which he overheard decades ago, Elliot sets out to prove his mother wrong, while he leaves the parenting of his twin boys entirely to his wife.

Entertaining, witty, and poignant, this is the story of grown children learning to forgive parents for their mistakes as they begin to make inevitable mistakes of their own.

“Sometimes Astrid thought about everything in her life that could have been different – all the men and women she could have married, having her children or not having any children at all, moving to Paris, she and Russell dying in bed together at a hundred years old. She thought about how every decision of hers had rippled into her children’s lives, even this one, when she was still their mother every day, but not actually in charge of their lives, not making decisions on their behalf.”