After her best friend's narrow brush with death, Josie decides that life is too short to let old grievances stand in the way of family togetherness. This year, she resolves, her three grown daughters'the girls she raised so carefully yet with such mixed results'will come home for Christmas. With her uncanny ear for Southern sensibility and her sharp-eyed wit, Battle gives us the perfect upstairs/downstairs comedy and a portrait of a family in all its tender, touching, and flawed glory that readers young and old will cherish.