Five friends meet weekly at a restaurant called Yellowbird on New York's Upper East Side, revealing the long-hidden secrets of their pasts and how each, in her fashion, has become a survivor beyond all expectations.Texas-born Billie Redmond, the owner of Yellowbird, has come a long way from singing in her daddy's honky-tonk roadhouse. She escapes small town life for the glamour of New York City, where she can be a star like her idol Janis Joplin, and for a brief incandescent moment she lives her dream. But when the hits dry up, so do the high times, and Billie searches her soul to avoid the same fate as her idol.Beautiful, sexy, smart, and black, Felicity Johnson is a successful lawyer whose extramarital affair is part salvation, part invitation to disaster. It will take courage to finally escape from a loveless marriage but, she wonders, does she have the strength to break the self-destructive bond?Kathryn O'Mara Henry comes from a long line of Boston cops, including her hard-drinking father, who terrorizes the family. But one cold night her mother puts a violent end to the nightmare of abuse. From this hell, Kathryn develops into a vivacious and independent woman who finally finds a "good" man who can give her children the stability they need or scar them - and her - for life.Raised in Florida, Eve Bader is a free spirit who dreams of a career on the silver screen. She is so determined to make it as an actress in Hollywood that she forsakes her young daughter, Nicole, for a chance at stardom. Only when she starts a new life with her daughter in New York does she begin to prosper as an actress. But once again, her blind ambition threatens her relationship with her daughter, and friendship within the group.Gara Whiteman has worked hard to become a prominent psychologist, and after resolving her love/hate relationship with her controlling mother and a divorce from her husband of twenty-two years, she takes on the biggest struggle of her life - and is finally open to finding someone to love again.The intimacies from each woman's past and present are brought to the shared table at Yellowbird, where they variously support, amuse, encourage, and betray each other, finally emerging stronger than any of them dared imagine. Read Less