A Family Daughter

the long version

"It's 1979, and seven-year-old Abby, the youngest member of the close-knit Santerre family, is trapped indoors with the chicken pox during a heat wave. The events set in motion that summer will span decades and continents, as the Santerres become entangled with an aging French playboy, a young Eastern European prostitute, a spoiled heiress, and her ailing jet-set mother. Maile Meloy takes us through the world of this changeable family, its values and taboos, its heartbreak and bitterness and fierce devotion." "A novel about passion and desire, fear and betrayal, A Family Daughter illuminates both the joys and complications of contemporary life, and the relationship between truth and fiction."--BOOK JACKET.