The At fifty-seven, Julia Ames is living an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination toward self-sabotage and prickly alienation, she has found herself with a husband she loves, two happy children, and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs. When she bumps into an old friend that she hasn't spoken to in years--a friend who almost ended her marriage decades prior--Julia finds herself reexamining her supposedly happy life.;Compounded with a bombshell announcement from her son and her daughter's impending departure for college, this chance meeting threatens to send Julia spinning out of control. Daunted by a looming empty nest, Julia becomes consumed with her checkered past--and with the chaos of her present. She grapples with a complicated new daughter-in-law, the reappearance of her own estranged mother, and the forbidden allure of rekindling a relationship that;was once;both her lifeline and her downfall. The novel follows Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months as well as the fifty-plus years that preceded them, from her chaotic childhood in Chicago to her;fraught;early days of marriage and motherhood. SAME AS IT EVER WAS ultimately examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman's life and asks what it takes to form--and keep--a family.