''I adored it'' Claire Lombardo''Feels like watching a master painter at work'' Ann Napolitano''I inhaled this book in a weekend'' Leslie JamisonSummer, California, 1970s.Sally Samuelson is eight years old and the course of her family''s life is about to change. When her golden-boy brother Ellis, just graduated from high school, drives up the coast with his two best friends, he promises to be back in a week. But he does not return. After Ellis''s unexpected death, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis again - especially after Julia, Ellis''s girlfriend, shows up pregnant on their doorstep. And over the next four decades, the family fractures and rebuild, again and again - in a story that takes in love affairs, illnesses, late-in-life marriages and long-hidden secrets, and shows how brief intimate connections and heart-shattering losses can reverberate through generations.