Sounds clear and easy

In this contemporary novel, Cassy and Ray are middle-classed people with the kinds of problems all people face in the everyday world of work and children, yet their uniqueness lies in the ways in which this world overlaps with their own inner worlds and the worlds of others close to them. The inevitable creeping of the past into their days and nights is sometimes a comfort, but is always a reminder that they are alive, have been for years, and will probably continue to be, with or without love.

Cassy is a woman who has followed her dreams almost subconsciously; nevertheless, she has followed them. She is preoccupied with moving away from the time and place of her impoverished childhood, while at the same time, clinging to memories of teenage love and the loss of her first husband in the Vietnam War. Ray has no dreams; he is motivated by money and obsessed with living above his black sheep brother Luke. Ironically, Luke's corrupting presence serves to help define many of the complex relationships in the novel.

The story is essentially Cassy's, but her story is inextricably bound to Ray's story and to Luke's. Thus, the telling of one story requires the telling of another.