A novel about family relationships with parents in their middle years (ours) with the tension of grown-up children living under the same roof (ours) and all the attendant clashes and misunderstandings that do not stem from a real hatred or dislike, but rather from the tensions and passions of clashing approaches to life and changes. The book is really about changes: Sprig Wyeth (great name) is independently wealthy and to the outside observer would have an ideal life: perfect family, intellectual pursuits, member of various boards and charities, a few close friends, etc. But inside, his relationship with his wife has changed through neglect and his inability to recognize/deal with that; his relationship with his son is most tempestuous, again through the change of having to deal with a maturing young adult who just doesn't quite fit the mould that Sprig thinks he should; change within himself as he goes through a mid-life crisis of wanting to return to the halcyon, carefree days of his youth when he spent a year footloose in Japan; change when one of his best friends dies of lung cancer; change when he has to put his irascible father into an seniors home; and change when his daughter marries and then gets pregnant, presenting Sprig with the very unwelcome prospect of becoming a Grandfather. And there is change in Frances, his wife: frustrated with the inattention and lack of consideration from Sprig; also not welcoming of the prospects of grandparenthood; change when her best friend and best personal confidant goes through divorce because her husband marries his secretary; change when a beloved elderly aunt dies gently at a bonfire at a family picnic.

The death of the friend becomes the catalyst and key for Sprig to realize that change does not have to be threatening, that it can be positive, but also that relationships require work and do not flourish and take care of themselves. Sprig finally realizes, with respect to his son, that "...the guilt of unconsciousness was the only unforgivable sin", i.e., the inability or the unwillingness to consider and feel an issue from another person's perspective. And the death of his friend--doomed, but fighting to squeeze every ounce of life left to him, alive in a way that Sprig never felt himself to be--throws into relief and realization, for Sprig, the value of the life and the loves that he does have. As Sprig realizes in the end, after he has been "born" as a Grandfather and revels in it: "'Love, love' he murmured aloud. It meant to him a long struggling birth, which would perhaps never be finished. And that, too, seemed good. The unfinishedness. The sense of all the years ahead".