Fiction. These linked stories the pain of an artist's life and of those who share it. A married children's book illustrator falls in love with a photorealist refugee. Their daughter, a blocked poet, becomes infatuated with a young painter with whom she shares a palpable bond. And this young painter, dumped by his girlfriend and tired of the hustle, envisions settling down with his widowed stepmother in the house where he grew up. Whether in a college town, a Brooklyn loft, or a Carolina coastal cottage, these stories explore, over a 30-year span, how the choices the characters make shape those they love in ways they never anticipate, down through the generations in a surprising portrait of one family's intimate struggle to find the paths that will carry them to the work they must do, the lives they must lead, and the people they can't help but love.