The story begins with a house fire in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights. The house belongs to Bill and Elena Richardson and their four teenagers. The youngest child, Izzy, is supected of starting the fire. The Richardson's own an apartment that they rent to a photographer and her daughter. The book explores the tangled relationships between the two families that culminate in the fire. It is a story about motherhood, what it means to be a mother and what lengths mothers will go to to protect their children.
It's a beautifully written book. It's not fast paced but there's enough going on to make it a page turner. There are a broad range of interesting characters and the author provides some great insights into photography and motherhood. This passgae really resonated with me "to a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once... And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again."
