Late 1960s. Morgan is in his 40s and has a shaggy beard that makes him look much older. Morgan is the owner of an extensive wardrobe of the most bizarre costumes and amazing headdresses, from a tropical helmet to a Napoleonic cocked hat. Every day Morgan changes his outfits, trying on new identities, and in his strange costumes he walks aimlessly through the streets, escaping the homesickness. His fantasies are an escape from a reality in which he has a sweet but unremarkable wife, a brood of seven daughters, an unhappy sister and a half-mad mother. The inventor Morgan is locked inside his family existence, it seems to him that real life, stormy, bright, unusual, is somewhere very close, you just need to look carefully at the world, and one day it will open to you in all its diversity. And one day Morgan meets Emily and Leon, wanderers by choice, showing puppet shows here and there. And from now on, Morgan's life changes...An eccentric, whimsical, ironic, sad and very warm novel by Anne Tyler about family, its joys and horrors.