In her new novel, Elizabeth Strout tells unforgettable stories about the people of a small town who long for love and happiness but often experience sorrow and pain. There are two sisters: one sacrifices her self-respect for marriage to a wealthy man, while the other is inspired by a book to change her life. The school janitor wants to help an outsider and finds himself in a crisis of faith; an adult woman still yearns for her mother's love as she did as a child. And a successful writer from New York returns to her hometown for the first time in seventeen years to visit her siblings. The full spectrum of human emotions, from hate and envy, loneliness and anger to profound compassion, unfolds in these family stories. They are tales about the nature of humanity.