L.A. Weather

The Alvarado family of Rancho Verde, a neighborhood in West Los Angeles, begins to fracture on a January evening in 2016 when three-year-old twins Diana and Andrea fall into the neglected, algae-filled swimming pool at the home of their grandparents, Oscar and Keila Alvarado. Keila, who is babysitting, steps away to answer the door for a pizza delivery. When their mother, Olivia, returns and instinctively sends her husband, Felix Almeida, to check the pool, they find the girls submerged. Paramedics revive the twins, and both survive.

The near-drowning exposes deeper dysfunction. Oscar, Keila's husband of 39 years, has spent the past year sinking into apathy, obsessively watching the Weather Channel while neglecting the house and his marriage. Keila, a Jewish-Mexican sculptor, has responded by cutting off physical intimacy and abandoning her art. Two days after the accident, she tells Oscar she wants a divorce.

The novel tracks the family across 12 calendar months. Oscar and Keila have three adult daughters. Claudia, the eldest at 36, is a celebrity chef with a cooking show and a catering business, married to Gabriel Breene, a literary scout from New York. Olivia, 33, is an architect who renovates and flips houses. Patricia, 28, works in social media marketing and lives at home with her parents and her 12-year-old son, Daniel, fathered by a boy who raped her when she was 14. Patricia is married to Eric Remillard, a consumer trends expert based in San Francisco whom she sees mainly on weekends.

After the accident, Olivia has the pool demolished with her own construction crew, leaving a cement patch the family calls "the keloid scar." The three sisters demand their parents see a therapist and give the marriage one year. Keila reluctantly agrees, but the single therapy session goes nowhere: Keila talks at length while Oscar says almost nothing.

Oscar vanishes for days, driving to Florida and back. Keila tracks his credit card but withholds this from their daughters, deepening their fury when they discover her secrecy. Meanwhile, Olivia makes a private annual pilgrimage to Death Valley, where she once scattered the ashes of Sarah and Elias, her stillborn twins from a devastating premature delivery in Acapulco years earlier. After years of fertility treatments, miscarriages, and a life-threatening birth that required a hysterectomy, Olivia and Felix have only Diana and Andrea, plus two remaining embryos frozen at a fertility lab. When the lab sends a routine letter asking about the embryos' fate, Felix insists they be destroyed. Olivia refuses to sign, and the unsigned form becomes a symbol of their unraveling marriage. In April, Olivia tells Felix she no longer loves him. He threatens legal war and begins harassing her by remotely manipulating the house's smart devices and draining their joint bank account.

Oscar's secret emerges in pieces. Years earlier, he secretly bought an almond orchard in Kern County called Happy Crunch Almond Orchard, driven by a desire to honor his ancestors' legacy as California landowners. Only his Aunt Belinda, who manages the finances, knows. California's worst recorded drought has devastated the crop and plunged him deep into debt. His weather obsession is not a quirk but a rational terror: without rain, he will lose everything.

Through the spring, warning signs about Claudia accumulate. She quits a marathon after 20 minutes, misses a major catering event, and is detained at a department store for shoplifting. At the family's Passover Seder, a ritual dinner, Claudia rises from the table, staggers across the yard, and collapses. An MRI reveals a massive benign brain tumor in her right frontal lobe, the cause of every baffling symptom.

Surgery carries a 10 percent survival rate. Claudia beats those odds but remains in a coma for weeks. Gabriel arrives from New York with her advance directive and trust papers, infuriating the family, who see him as positioning himself to claim her assets. When Daniel visits and talks to Claudia, she squeezes his hand, the first sign of awareness.

Claudia wakes on Memorial Day. Her sight returns gradually, but she has permanently lost her sense of smell and taste, ending her career as a chef. She reveals that Gabriel has a lover in New York and that she had asked him for a divorce before the surgery, a fact he concealed. Oscar, suddenly galvanized, takes charge of Claudia's divorce, hiring a lawyer and leading the legal strategy. His mood lifts, and thoughts of suicide he had been entertaining dissipate.

In summer, three parallel crises intensify. Olivia's divorce judgment grants her custody of the twins, but the house must be sold and the embryos destroyed by court order. The family moves back under one roof at the Alvarados', with Lola, Olivia's childhood nanny who has been caring for the twins, joining them.

Patricia and Mabel, an ultrasound technician at the fertility lab, execute a covert plan to rescue the embryos before the court order takes effect. Mabel sets aside the embryos and prepares paperwork for Patricia to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a surrogate. The scheme is legally risky, but Patricia considers it a moral imperative.

Meanwhile, Keila travels to Mexico City, where her gallerist Simon Brik has pursued her romantically for over two decades. Weakened by her marital crisis, she sleeps with him and returns carrying guilt. Daniel, now going by Dani, attends an LGBTQ-plus summer camp and returns identifying as gender fluid. Patricia accepts without hesitation.

In September, Oscar drives Keila to Kern County and shows her the orchard. He confesses everything: the secret purchase, the drought-driven debt, the possibility of losing the land. Instead of erupting in anger, Keila laughs at the orchard's name, holds his hand, and promises to help. She also admits she spent years sabotaging his business ideas out of resentment over being excluded from the Alvarado family trust, from which a prenuptial agreement excluded spouses. On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Oscar brings the entire family to the orchard for a picnic, finally revealing his secret to Claudia and Olivia.

Patricia divorces Eric amicably. At a family dinner, Oscar confronts his daughters about their double standard: They rejected Keila's divorce announcement in January but expect unconditional support for their own three divorces. The sisters apologize, admitting they loved their parents' marriage more than they loved their own.

An October wildfire forces a mandatory evacuation. The family shelters at Lola's small bungalow in Highland Park. Lying awake, Oscar realizes everything he truly values is safe under one roof. After returning home, Oscar and Keila reconcile. On Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, they announce they are staying together. Keila flies to Mexico City and ends her relationship with Simon. She confesses the affair to Oscar, who absorbs the news without anger, kisses her, and welcomes her home.

At a family dinner, Patricia announces her pregnancy with Olivia's embryos. The family is stunned. Claudia erupts, then breaks into laughter, telling her sisters never to call her a kleptomaniac again. Rain begins to fall.

The almond trees are destroyed by a massive grinding machine. Oscar endures the sight as penance. An ultrasound reveals Patricia is carrying twin boys. Claudia enrolls in writing school and begins working on a television pilot. Felix announces he is moving to Vancouver, reducing the risk of his discovering the embryo scheme. Heavy December rains pound Los Angeles, and Oscar agonizes over whether the drought may be ending, meaning he destroyed the trees in vain. Keila secretly sells her parents' house in Mexico City and uses the proceeds to pay off the family's debts, then announces a plan to convert the barren orchard land into a solar farm called Happy Sunshine Fields.

On Christmas morning, the family gathers around a tree near a menorah with spent candles. A new family calendar, custom-ordered by Keila with a photo for each month, hangs on the refrigerator, symbolizing the family's reconnection. Then Patricia notices Keila has scheduled a mammogram earlier than usual. Keila reveals she has found a small lump in her breast.

Oscar walks into the backyard and stands on the keloid scar in the pounding rain. His daughters and Keila follow him outside, and the entire family embraces. Despite the uncertainty ahead, Oscar recognizes that his family has never been more tightly bound together.