Seattle, Washington, 2010s

Eleanor is uncomfortable with her milieu in Seattle; the boring Sydney Madsen is contrasted with the interesting - or “crazy in an interesting way” (10) - people Eleanor knew in New York. She does not connect with the young stay-at-home mothers who try to loop her into activities at the expensive private Galer Street School. The only reason that Eleanor is in Seattle at all is to satisfy a deal with her atheist husband Joe: 10 years in irreligious Seattle, then 10 years in Eleanor’s preferred Manhattan. Seattle, at least for Eleanor, has none of the creative industry that composed her world in the past. The homogeneity of the city exacerbates her lingering feelings of displacement.

Aspen, Colorado, 1970s

A week after their mother’s death, Eleanor and Ivy’s father drives the girls to Colorado to live in his friend’s guesthouse. There, Eleanor is left to...