OPIS
The finest novelists of psychologically acute domesticity purposefully linger over the preparation of meals and the furnishing of rooms, and often turn special occasions into crucibles for conflicts and epiphanies. A master at these time-honored techniques, Tyler extends her reach in her seventeenth novel and creates two very different households that serve as microcosms for twenty-first-century American society. The two families converge at the Baltimore airport, each nervously anticipating the arrival of an adopted Korean baby girl. Bitsy and Brad Donaldson appear to be stereotypical white middle-class Americans.