A powerful and redemptive novel of love and family, from the author of the bestselling Blue Shoe, Grace (Eventually), and Operating Instructions.

Rosie Ferguson is seventeen and ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school. She's intelligent-she aced AP physics; athletic-a former state-ranked tennis doubles champion; and beautiful. She is, in short, everything her mother, Elizabeth, hoped she could be. The family's move to Landsdale, with stepfather James in tow, hadn't been as bumpy as Elizabeth feared.

But as the school year draws to a close, there are disturbing signs that the life Rosie claims to be leading is a sham, and that Elizabeth's hopes for her daughter to remain immune from the pull of the darker impulses of drugs and alcohol are dashed. Slowly and against their will, Elizabeth and James are forced to confront the fact that Rosie has been lying to them-and that her deceptions will have profound consequences.

This is Anne Lamott's most honest and heartrending novel yet, exploring our human quest for connection and salvation as it reveals the traps that can befall all of us.

To read an excerpt from Chapter One, click HERE.

Anne Lamott (born April 10, 1954, in San Francisco) is the author of several novels and works of non-fiction, and a progressive political activist. She is also an acclaimed public speaker and teacher of writing. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, her nonfiction works are largely autobiographical, with strong doses of self-deprecating humor. Marked by their transparency, Lamott's writings cover such subjects as alcoholism, single motherhood, and Christianity.