Twenty-nine-year-old Lewis's family are the definition of dysfunctional: his brothers, living estranged and unknown lives in Texas and Toronto, his mother, confined in her self-imposed silent state in a room full of fish and amphibians and his father, at work in the Victory Barber Shop where customers are surrounded by souvenirs of wartime Europe. And Lewis, caught between working at a recruitment agency, helping his father out in the barbers and keeping his mother in touch with world news.

But when he receives an email out of the blue from Christy, an old school friend, he is intrigued by her society for Hope for Newborns. Compared with the murkiness of home, the promises of her manifesto - freedom through friendship and love through sacrifice - appear so luminous, and the chance of romance so tangible.