Liam Noone reflects that any biographer tasked with narrating his life would sum him up as a man who wanted to escape his childhood. This is why he began his career by purchasing property on the Central California Coast, as far from Brooklyn as he thought he could go. While making plans to build a hotel near Santa Barbara, he purchased a small craftsman cottage, right on the cliffs of the coastline overlooking the ocean. Rather than tearing it down to build something larger, he kept the small home for more than 30 years. He’d always been afraid to bring his children there, and as he is pushed over the edge of the cliff, his last thought is that it’s “better [him] than them” (4).

Liam’s daughter, Nora, is an architect in Brooklyn. She has just been hired by a 25-year-old woman named Morgan and her fiancé, Sam, to renovate a large brownstone. Nora is instantly irritated by Morgan’s lack of interest in the renovation process and her penchant for pulling out her phone mid-conversation. Morgan’s fiancé happens to be Nora’s brother, although he is the product of Liam’s second marriage. Nora and Liam were not close.