What’s a nice Southern Jewish girl like Emma Fine doing married to an angry but beautiful and incredibly sexy black artist like Jesse Tree? Emma Tree’s marriage is falling apart. Jesse’s obsession with Skytop, the old inn he’s renovating, pulls him further away from her, and the distance forces Emma into some uneasy questions about their relationship and about herself. She packs her bags and travels home to Louisiana, to a family she loves but barely knows. And the answers she finds along the way help solve the puzzles that have haunted her all her life. Before Emma’s mother Helen died, she made her husband Jake Fine promise to look after the baby should anything happen to Helen. After her death, Jake left his Baltimore home to travel to West Cypress, Louisiana, where a new wife was waiting. For Rosalie Norris, Emma was a dream come true. Emma is a right and precocious child, but by the time she’s a teenager, she has outgrown the old-fashioned provincialism of West Cypress and Rosalie’s stiflingly overprotective and obsessive love. While teaching in California, Emma meets and eventually marries Jesse Tree. Theirs is a passionate and loving relationship despite the vast differences between them. It’s a secret Emma must keep from her family, but it’s nothing compared to the secrets they’ve kept hidden from Emma all these years.