This memoir traces the paths of a mother and daughter as they face several similar choices. It is written from the point of view of the daughter who, in an effort to understand her own choices and motivations, discovers that to her dismay, her path has been more like her mother's than she'd first thought. The memoir also traces the lives of other women in the family and meditates on the presence of family secrets and the history of how society has treated unwed mothers in the twentieth century
