Jim and Bob Burgess left their hometown in Maine long ago. The death of their father was tragic, and neither of the brothers has yet survived it; both still live with trauma in their souls. The first is a successful lawyer, pragmatic and cynical, the second is an unlucky lawyer, good-natured, with an unsettled personal life. Years later, the brothers are forced to return to their parents' house to deal with the story that another Burgess got caught up in - their nephew. And everything that, as it seemed to them, they were able to forget, leave in the past, falls with renewed vigor. In this novel, as in the iconic Olivia Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout penetrates into the very essence of the nature of the family with its joys and sufferings, resentments and sacrifices, secrets and revelations.