Tyler, Anne

In 1965 the Bedloe family lives on a quiet street in Baltimore. Seventeen-year-old Ian has dreams for the future, until the night when he meddles in his older brother's life--and from that careless moment on, nothing can ever be the same.

Barnaby Gaitlin, a thirty-year-old who was frequently in trouble as a youth, has been working steadily for eleven years for Rent-a-Back, Inc., but it seems as though his family, his ex-wife, and even the woman who seems to be interested in him, just cannot get over his past.

A chance encounter between two families--the Donaldsons, and the Iranian-born Yasdans--at the Baltimore airport prompts an examination about what it means to be an American.

A very messy princess in a very tidy royal family has the opportunity to prove that there are advantages to not being neat.