Sara has a creative streak - she works as an editor in a publishing house, until she moves with her husband to a rural island in order to settle into a domestic life and start a family. But then the months go by and Sara does not conceive - she can't create the one thing she wants more and more. Her great friend Julia is of course trying not to get pregnant - she is having an affair with a married man - while other wives grumble about their growing armies of children. Then, Sara reads a novel in manuscript, and becomes obsessed with a creative life of a different kind - the autobiography-in-fiction of Fanny Anderson, an elderly, beautiful, terrifying recluse with a mysterious past.. In dealing with the problems of infertility, Nancy Thayer has created another richly satisfying novel which will appeal to all the many readers who enjoyed her previous books.