A brief collection of stories that traces the first world predicaments of largely fortunate people: a woman confronts her retirement, her mother's dementia, and her daughter's promptings to heed climate change and change her lifestyle; a musician retreats to his vacation home in Maine to grieve the loss of his partner but must face the demands of his grasping, needy brother bounced from his shady career in Africa; a mother grapples with her brilliant son's fascination with class struggle and sudden move to drop out of an Ivy League college; a woman revisits San Juan, where years earlier a fun vacation getaway turned out to be a gateway to painful realizations about herself; and a man is asked to rethink what it means to live a good life when he escorts his elderly French mother to the memorial service of her best friend.