Fifteen-year-old Rachel Cooper helps to care for her irascible grandfather during his final illness and endures his death. She learns about the nature of relationships, independence, love, and loss in this sensitive coming-of-age novel.

Every Sunday, Rachel, her mom, Shirley, and her dad, Manny, visit Izzy, her grandfather. Angry, sharp-tongued and judgmental, Izzy frightens Rachel. Izzy has disowned his actor son, Lenny, and angered Rachel's footloose brother Jeremy. He seems bent on alienating the rest of the family. Despite a recent case of stomach flu, Izzy is apparently healthy, walking 4 miles each day and bragging about his strength and stamina as a youthful stonemason. Rachel dreads the visits to her grandfather every Sunday, but she enjoys preparing a big dinner in his kitchen with her mother, joking and bumping into each other in the small apartment kitchen. This is strange, since Rachel avoids cooking with her...