In this novel, Susanna Moore displays a naturalist’s eye for the landscape of her native Hawaii and an uncanny sensitivity to the despairing love between mothers and daughters. Lily Shields grows up amid the fragrance of night-jasmine and burning sugar cane, and the heady atmosphere of her mother’s madness. For if Anna Shields is an island unto herself - fragile, glamorous, and fearfully needy - Lily is the bridge that connects her to reality. But now Lily is a young woman and a mother herself, self-exiled from Hawaii but still attached to Anna’s tragedy.