In 1908 Long Island, young newlywed Millie Turner, throwing a grand party for New York's social elite at Rose Briar Hall, wakes up, unable to recall anything, is shunned by her friends and must find out what really happened that night, or much more than her reputation will be at risk.

"In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt's family. Tomoko's aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home-and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company-are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens...