Ben Joe is the only boy in a family of six sisters, Mama and Gram. He is studying for a law degree in New York when he hears his eldest sister Joanne has left her husband and returned home with her baby girl. Out of a mixture of homesickness and duty Ben Joe returns to the home in which he has always felt like an outsider. OVER A MILLION ANNE TYLER BOOKS SOLD `She's changed my perception on life' Anna Chancellor `One of my favourite authors ' Liane Moriarty `She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan `Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve `My favourite writer, and the best line-and-length novelist in the world' Nick Hornby `A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks `Tyler is not merely good, she is wickedly good' John Updike `I love Anne Tyler' Anita Brookner `Her fiction has strength of vision, originality, freshness, unconquerable humour' Eudora Welty