"Ella is a perfect Shelby Hearon heroine: sympathetic, harried, vaguely overwhelmed by life. She and her teenage daughter, Birdie, live in Old Metairie, Louisiana, where they struggle to get by on what Ella makes as a plant sitter. Still, the two muddle along cheerfully enough, with mom casually dating a slick real-estate agent and daughter enjoying her budding talent as a cellist. But when her beauty-queen older sister, Terrell, dies, Ella is drawn back into the orbit of her proper Texas family. Long ago she fled her demanding mother and professor father; now, as the surviving, not-quite-good-enough daughter, she finds herself criticized more harshly than ever. The story follows our heroine as she finds love and self-acceptance, which appear hand in hand."