We know the Copeland family is in crisis. The question is—do they know it too?  As the novel opens, Jean, the family’s emotionally numbed mother, has taken a secret lover, only to lose him to suicide. Her husband, Gordon, is unaware of her betrayal, distracted by the fear that he’s losing his own prized asset, his mind. Daughter Priscilla is up in her room talking to her friends about clothes, or boys, or the other inane subjects that bluster through her nineteen-year-old brain. (She’s been a handful since birth; now her biggest career goal is extending her annoying reach to all of America through reality TV.) Nine-year-old Otis—named for the elevator company, but known to his sister as “Freak” or “Baby Freak”—is falling in love for the first time, without parental guidance. At the back of the Copeland house, Grandfather Theodore is in the early throes of Parkinson’s disease, and Vivian, the family’s ninety-eight-year-old great-grandmother, is a razor-sharp grande-dame who suffers no foolishness from anyone; yet she harbors secret dreams of her own.  With empathy, humor, and emotional wisdom, Elizabeth Crane offers the unforgettable story of what one family finds when they go looking for meaning in all the wrong places.