When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls, the younger two - one of them Jane - sharing a birthday. With so much in common, the two families became almost instantly inseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults, and before long the pairs had exchanged partners, divorced, remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, two families were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed. Two pairs of girls were left in shock. And Jane and her stepsister were thrown into a state of wordless combat for the love of their fathers. The sisters' contest, recounted by Jane Alison with stunning emotional insight, is waged throughout less-than-innocent childhoods - and ends in a tragedy that is at the same time unthinkable and inevitable.

Author Biography

Jane Alison is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, and Natives and Exotics.