Susannah, a journalist, considers herself something of a war correspondent for stories of family conflict, reporting on domestic battles and interviewing people caught in the crossfire. Without realizing it, she has even instilled this fascination with the extremes of family life in her thirteen-year-old daughter, Lizzie, who collects clippings on some of the more bizarre stories she reads.Susannah is so used to witnessing upheavals in strangers' lives that she is completely unprepared for her own shock and grief when she is summoned home by her estranged family for her father's funeral. To Susannah, her parents' home is still hostile territory, and she is unwilling to abandon the safety of her role as an observer to enter the fray.Meanwhile, Lizzie's father, Teddy, is facing a severe test of her own when he is jailed for his part in a peace demonstration. His efforts to promote the cause of peace have ended in violence, and like Susannah, he is quite unprepared for his own reaction to his predicament. At the same time, he begins to question the lifestyle in which he has managed to avoid most family freedom starts to take on new connotations as he spends a week behind bars.Lizzie is deeply attached to her mother and to Teddy, but she is preparing for her own adult future, somewhat wary of the vagaries of adult emotions. She feels buffeted by adult choices as she tries to understand what her parents are going through and to figure out what the changes in their lives will mean for her.Susannah, Lizzie, and Teddy react differently to the changes they experience, but each one learns that the stories behind the headlines of family news often have surprising endings.