Resentments emerge when a woman returns to her Virginia hometown after a failed quest for stardom, in "a fine novel of manners about life in the South" ( Library Journal ). In an attempt to discover why her life hasn't worked out the way she had hoped it would, Valerie Caldwell returns to the Southern town she left twelve years earlier to visit her old haunts and two friends from her school days, Tess and Mary Grace—much to their alarm and chagrin.