Faced with the sudden death of her husband Pearce, fifty-two-year-old Annie confronts her childhood and early adulthood through a series of memories of her youth in Georgia. Her brother Cat, her parents, her grandmother, her love Danny Haygood, and her daughter Maggie all play significant roles in Annie”s life. Annie also faces the death of her mother and her grandmother, but nothing has prepared her for the loss of her husband. Trying to cope with Pearce”s death, Annie distances Cat and his wife Lily, but memories help her to reconnect with her brother. Searching her past, she grapples with her young feelings for Danny and the mystery of why she left him behind. At the end of the novel, Annie faces her aloneness and begins to nurture herself as the lady of the house, a role she has never quite known.

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