Lynn Howard has just begun to appreciate the freedom of the empty nest when Heather, her acerbic, self-centered twenty-year-old daughter announces that she is pregnant. Heather decides that adoption is the practical solution. After the baby is born, stunned and furious to find her heart at war with her head, she declares that she needs more time and she and her baby come home to stay with Lynn. Three weeks later, Heather suddenlyinsists that Lynn deliver the baby to her adoptive parents before that resolve weakens again. And this is where the novel begins.