Meet Sarah Walters, a Camellia Society debutante with a weakness for bad ideas. Sarah''s mother lectures her on etiquette but tends to get loose after a few gins. Still, Sarah tries to follow the debutante code - after all, in Charleston, manners mean everything. But it''s not easy to follow the rules, particularly in the summers when she runs into boys in pickup trucks, or, later, when she moves to New York with her friends. For the Camellia girls soon learn, careers don''t always go to plan and men don''t always love you back: the bright future they thought was theirs dissolves into heartbreak, illness and addiction. And when a shocking event brings thirty-something Sarah back home to Charleston, she must decide where ''home'' really is.

Hannah Legare is in trouble. Despite marrying a wonderful man, she struggles to stay faithful to him. Despite setting up a hugely successful business venture, she can''t quite focus on its growing financial difficulties. Despite knowing that her husband has finally decided he can no longer stay in their marriage, she believes that by climbing up his balcony, fuelled by one cocktail too many, she can somehow persuade him to take her back.One three-storey fall later, Hannah Legare is on her way back to reluctantly recuperate in her childhood home, Charleston: a town full of memories, and the town where she last saw her father.On a warm April evening in 1985, Buzz Legare - notoriously charming general practitioner and family man - went on a routine fishing trip in the mouth of the Charleston harbor. Two days later, his boat was found drifting, holding nothing but his fishing pole and his waiting labrador retriever.Now it is 2008, and the family Buzz left behind is still reeling from his disappearance. His son, Palmer, a veterinary surgeon, has crafted a seemingly perfect life for himself. But although he has a loving partner and a fabulous, envied home, Palmer feels frustratingly numb to it all. Buzz''s wife, the (well) re-married Daisy, despite having much to say about her childrens'' lives, is almost pathological about keeping her own feelings under lock and key, and then there is Hannah, whose return to Charleston and whose attempts to solve the mysteries of the past stir up a hornets'' nest of secrets and emotion.

Meet Sarah Walters, a Camellia Society debutante with a weakness for bad ideas. Sarah's mother lectures her on etiquette but tends to get loose after a few gins. Still, Sarah tries to follow the debutante code - after all, in Charleston, manners mean everything. But it's not easy to follow the rules, particularly in the summers when she runs into boys in pickup trucks, or, later, when she moves to New York with her friends. For the Camellia girls soon learn, careers don't always go to plan and men don't always love you back: the bright future they thought was theirs dissolves into heartbreak, illness and addiction. And when a shocking event brings thirty-something Sarah back home to Charleston, she must decide where 'home' really is.

Meet Sarah Walters, a Camellia Society debutante with a weakness for bad ideas. Sarah''s mother lectures her on etiquette but tends to get loose after a few gins. Still, Sarah tries to follow the debutante code - after all, in Charleston, manners mean everything. But it''s not easy to follow the rules, particularly in the summers when she runs into boys in pickup trucks, or, later, when she moves to New York with her friends. For the Camellia girls soon learn, careers don''t always go to plan and men don''t always love you back: the bright future they thought was theirs dissolves into heartbreak, illness and addiction. And when a shocking event brings thirty-something Sarah back home to Charleston, she must decide where ''home'' really is.

Hannah Legare is in trouble. Despite marrying a wonderful man, she struggles to stay faithful to him. Despite setting up a hugely successful business venture, she can''t quite focus on its growing financial difficulties. Despite knowing that her husband has finally decided he can no longer stay in their marriage, she believes that by climbing up his balcony, fuelled by one cocktail too many, she can somehow persuade him to take her back.One three-storey fall later, Hannah Legare is on her way back to reluctantly recuperate in her childhood home, Charleston: a town full of memories, and the town where she last saw her father.On a warm April evening in 1985, Buzz Legare - notoriously charming general practitioner and family man - went on a routine fishing trip in the mouth of the Charleston harbor. Two days later, his boat was found drifting, holding nothing but his fishing pole and his waiting labrador retriever.Now it is 2008, and the family Buzz left behind is still reeling from his disappearance. His son, Palmer, a veterinary surgeon, has crafted a seemingly perfect life for himself. But although he has a loving partner and a fabulous, envied home, Palmer feels frustratingly numb to it all. Buzz''s wife, the (well) re-married Daisy, despite having much to say about her childrens'' lives, is almost pathological about keeping her own feelings under lock and key, and then there is Hannah, whose return to Charleston and whose attempts to solve the mysteries of the past stir up a hornets'' nest of secrets and emotion.

Meet Sarah Walters, a Camellia Society debutante with a weakness for bad ideas. Sarah's mother lectures her on etiquette but tends to get loose after a few gins. Still, Sarah tries to follow the debutante code - after all, in Charleston, manners mean everything. But it's not easy to follow the rules, particularly in the summers when she runs into boys in pickup trucks, or, later, when she moves to New York with her friends. For the Camellia girls soon learn, careers don't always go to plan and men don't always love you back: the bright future they thought was theirs dissolves into heartbreak, illness and addiction. And when a shocking event brings thirty-something Sarah back home to Charleston, she must decide where 'home' really is.