Oberlin College, 1973. Clare Mann, the daughter of a Protestant working-class family from Ohio, has never met anyone like her new roommate, Sally Rose. Wealthy, pretty, and Jewish, barely emancipated from her close-knit Los Angeles family, Sally has led a sheltered life. Still, she and the hard-working, jaded Clare form an extraordinary friendship that endures for years, through disastrous marriages, motherhood, and demanding careers on opposite coasts. Clare is fascinated by Sally's calm probity, her family's seeming perfection, the utter confidence and willful naivete that rule her personal life, while sheer ruthlessness governs her law practice. She comes to need Sally the way she has never needed anyone, and her trips to California provide respite from her own family difficulties and her growing responsibilities as a doctor specializing in AIDS. But as Clare grows closer to the Roses over the years, especially to Sally's father, she stumbles upon a carefully guarded family secret that could alienate her from Sally forever. And when the death of Ben, Sally's heroin-addicted younger brother, follows soon after the death of their mother, Clare is stunned to see this once-enviable and larger-than-life family reduced to human proportions.