When Clare Mann arrives at Oberlin in 1973, she’s never met anyone like Sally Rose. Rich and beautiful, Sally is utterly foreign to a middle-class, Midwestern Protestant like Clare—and utterly fascinating. The fascination only grows when Sally brings her home to L.A. Mr. Rose—charismatic, charming, and owner of a profitable business shrouded in secrey—is nearly as compelling a figure to Clare as he is to his own daughter. California seems like paradise after winters in Ohio. And Clare begins to look forward desperately to these visits, to carefree rides in Sally’s Kharmann Ghia and lazy poolside days.

As the years pass, Clare becomes a doctor and Sally a lawyer, always remaining roommates at heart, a plane ride or phone call away. Marriages and divorces and births and deaths do not separate them. But secrets might—for as Clare watches, the Rose family begins to self-destruct before her eyes. And the things she knows are the kinds of things that no one wants to tell a best friend.

"A valentine to the staying power of women's friendships."—Cleveland Plain Dealer

”[A] terrific novel.”—Redbook

"First novels that track a pair of friends from college days through their subsequent lives aren’t exactly uncommon, but Moody’s is so freshly observed and gifted with such a powerful sense of the ravages of time that it feels utterly new...The book never loses its edge, at once compassionate and humorous, nor its moving conviction that a strong friendship between women can be one of life’s most powerful relationships."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

”Moody is brilliant at exposing just how emotionally and morally complex a friendship can be.”—Diane Vreuls, author of Are We There Yet?

"She captures the feel of things, the complexity of human lives, and the ability of time to expose and to heal."—Josephine Humphreys, author of Nowhere Else on Earth