Auchincloss' tale of a New York family dynasty opens with the suicide of Geraldine Brevoort, a woman whose pride and envy fed her alcoholism and kept her alone, and leads the listener through an odyssey, told in flashbacks by Geraldine's plain yet bright cousin, Ida, and Ida's husband, Derrick - also Geraldine's lover, unbeknownst to Ida - and other family members. What unfolds is the story of the intertwining lives of families from different ethnic and social backgrounds, and the misapprehensions that result when such families are brought together through love, marriage, and adultery.
