The roles each child member of this happy family learned when all were young now pinch like too tight shoes. Finally grown up and generally educated, with the added irony that their father is a scholar of Shakespeare (that ultimate expert in human nature), the sisters now hate the established childhood roles they are still clinging to, but all feel as if they'd be betraying the family for wanting to change. Avoiding the question of who they really are and holding onto the image of themselves in their familial roles, they fly out of their home after becoming adults and make disastrous life choices.

When their mother gets breast cancer, it becomes a time for introspection for each sister. They all need space to find out why their personal lives are going so wrong, and so they each are grateful for the excuse of their mother's cancer to move back home.

Each sister is forced by her failures to grow up and accept who she really is, and why, and why she has to change. People tend to evolve so what was once true for the women as girls can no longer be sustained as years pass and reality changes the inner child's beliefs and needs. The book is a sweet story reminiscent of 1950's TV shows but with the modern and eternal dilemmas of becoming adult beings.