There are two ways Louisa Maguire can look at her life: half-empty or half-full. On the half-empty side theres a husband whos never around, perpetual guilt about short-changing her children and her work, and the craziness of living in boom-time Dublin. And on the half-full side there are the children, a thriving business, wonderful friends and she knows deep down that husband never being around. But on the morning of her thirty-seventh birthday, Louisa decides that there has to be more to her existence than a routine that is frantic but familiar. She needs to live. And she needs to love. Her decision to change her life takes Louisa in extraordinary directions. But when it leads her back to her native New York, and to a summer in the Hamptons when she was seventeen, Louisa must take on the toughest challenge of her life: finally confronting the devastating truth about why she has always put security before passion.