At the age of twenty-nine. Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing after this tragic double blow, she answers the ad of a couple seeking a tutor for their teenage daughter and ends up spending the summer at the cottage of the Edwards family on the stunning New Hampshire coast.

No sooner does Sydney settle into the household routine - acting as something between a servant and a family member - than the Edwardses' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, show up for a weekend. Ben is a real-estate executive, Jeff is a professor. Both are handsome, both are accomplished, both are competitive. And both seem completely enraptured by Sydney.

As the weeks pass in this seaside idyll, Sydney enters a strange love triangle, infused with old rivalries and bitter secrets she can only guess at. And she begins to fear that the brothers' competiton for her affections could tear apart their family - and the fragile existence she has painstakingly rebuilt.

With the deep insight into human emotion that makes her work both intensely powerful and profoundly satisfying, and written in language both true and spare, this is Anita Shreve at her finest, telling an unforgettable and suprising story about the longing for family, the resilience of the heart, and the supreme courage it takes to love.