It’s 1979, and seven-year-old Abby, the youngest member of the close-knit Santerre family, is trapped indoors with the chicken pox during a heat wave. The events set in motion that summer will span decades and continents, as the Santerres become entangled with an aging French playboy, a young Eastern European prostitute, a spoiled heiress, and her ailing jet-set mother. With elegant precision, Meloy takes us through the world of this changeable family, its values and taboos, its heartbreak and bitterness and fierce devotion.