This novel pursues the story of Kitty Shelton from Rosemary Friedman's delightful earlier novels Proofs of Affection and Rose of Jericho. Kitty has watched her beloved husband die and her children grow to adulthood. She takes security from her role as family matriarch, but now her North London Jewish community is riven with dispute about the recent Israeli invasion of Lebanon. At the invitation of her gentlemanly suitor, Holocaust-survivor Maurice Morgenthau, Kitty visits New York - where she learns to please herself and in so doing discovers herself too.