In 1982, the American film star Sally Brash won an Oscar for her leading role in the year's best picture, No Trumpets, No Drums. It was made by her husband, acclaimed film producer Saul Jennings. The following year, outside a restaurant in Rome, Sally Brash was killed, hit in the street by a passing car. Her eleven-year-old daughter, Chassi, watched from the pavement. The movie world mourned. Fourteen years later, Chassi Jennings is a box-office star like her mother, beautiful and talented in a way of her own. But suddenly she's dizzy on the set, she can't seem to pretend she's okay, and the film she's shooting has to shut down.

With the biggest film of her life approaching re-creating her mother's signature role in her father's remake of No Trumpets, No Drums-Chassi is sent to psychotherapist Eleanor Costello, Ph.D., who quietly unveils Chassi's memories. In the room where Chassi untangles her grief, Eleanor begins to relive the death of her husband and the estrangement of her only daughter, Caroline. And in between sessions, Ionie St. John, aspiring actress, serves Chassi lattes at the local Cuppa Joe downstairs.

In this intricately woven story of mothers and daughters, loss and reconciliation, and the stubborn nature of truth, the lives of these three women overlap as they search for their true selves and for those they have lost. In Elaine Kagan's beautifully crafted and astonishing fourth novel, we see the Hollywood of old and new, we struggle with the truths and disappointments of two generations of families, and in them we sneak up on pieces of ourselves.