"To a Southerner, sweet and sad mean the same thing," writes Bosworth, an observation that aptly fits her jilted protagonist, Rory Cade, in love with a man who marries first one of her sisters and then the other, in this family saga rife with alcoholism, insanity, cancer, adultery and traumas related to the war in Vietnam. Set in and around New Orleans, mostly from 1958 to the late '60s, this bittersweet, episodic novel pierces Southern manners and mores with fierce tenderness.