Laura Bartone, now in her fifties, is forced to face unpleasant truths from the past when her troubled sister Caroline calls on the eve of a family reunion and asks to meet with her and their brother to discuss the abuses she believes she suffered at the hands of their emotionally distant mother.
New England spinster Lily Hill finds her old-fashioned sense of hospitality stressed to its limits when she is invaded by her family in the summer of 1989, and things become even worse when a sociology student arrives hoping to use the Hills as the basis of his Ph.D. dissertation on intergenerational dynamics.
Henry Perowne, a London neurosurgeon, goes through his normal Saturday activities, including a weekly squash game, but his unease grows as he makes his way through the throngs of anti-war protesters clogging London's streets, until a minor car accident with the petulant Baxter begins a series of events that erupts into violence.
Emme Vaugn cannot carry out her plans to rescue her mother from Saint Dymphna's Psychiatric Hospital, because Jane Doe, a mysterious woman who holds the key to how Emme got into the evil-fighting business, has already taken her mom out of there.
Joe the frog wants to be on the go, but even at a family reunion he is out of luck, as everyone says they are too busy, or he is too fast, too slow, too big, or too small to go with them, until Grandma invites him to go with her on a special outing.
Harry has a wonderful time playing and eating with his cousin Teddy at the family reunion, until it is time to go back home at the Woodland Inn. Includes facts about black bears.
