This novel begins in the 1960s in a small Wisconsin town, when a young boy, Mac, finds out that his beautiful handicapped older sister, Madeline, is in fact his father's first wife. A terrible cycling accident left her braindamaged, with the intellect of a six-year-old. When Aaron remarried he and his second wife then took in Madeline and treated her as one of their own children. Jane Hamilton, with her usual humour and keen observation of human relationships, deftly explores notions of childhood innocence and a breach between two branches of a large family that spans several decades of wars and political upheaval.