Suzanne Nelson was raised just outside of San Francisco. A Stanford grad and varsity runner, she heads to New York City for law school. She is gay, but has come out to no one. In New York she meets Kerry Neally, a New Yorker and fellow student. Who is straight. First in a study group and then as a pair, they find themselves become attached to one another. And have to work out that Kerry thinks she's straight. Eileen is Kerry's mother. She is a widow, and meeting Suzanne helps her leave the shell into which she placed herself after her husband died. And she comes to the attention of two men. One a widower. The other divorced. And love intevenes for her choice. With Suzanne settled into her New York life, she turns her back on her parents, who turned their backs on Suzanne's aunt Mary, a gay woman disowned by her parents and brother decades before. She, too, lives in New York and she and Eileen attempt to get Suzanne's parents to understand their daughter. Kate Nelson comes to New York to reason with her daughter. As eventually does William, her father. The story is about how the members of what becomes a large New York family deal with themselves, each other, and love.

The Neallys

As the train emerged from the tunnel I looked out the window. Kerry did not say how my mother came to be at the house. I am sure she was as discombobulated as I was. Kerry was not as generous as my Aunt Mary was about forgiveness. She would forgive me anything, and had forgiven my stubbornness, but I did not know if she could ever forgive someone who hurt me. My mother hurt me.


She hurt me because of what she, and my father, did to my Aunt Mary and if that were not bad enough, her treatment of my Aunt Mary meant she would treat me in the same way if she knew I too was a lesbian.


Chapter 51