For a moment that afternoon, it was only woman and water, the Bay in all its sickening glory squaring itself for a fight.

Life hasn't always been perfect, but for Abe and Cassandra Green, an afternoon on the San Francisco Bay might be as good as it gets. He's a doctor piloting his new sailing boat. She's a sculptor finally getting a bit of recognition. Their beautiful daughter Elizabeth is off to Harvard at the end of the summer. But then there is a terrible row. Cassandra has been unfaithful. In a fit of insanity, Abe throws himself off the boat.

A love story that begins with the end of a marriage, The Violet Hour follows a 21st century American family through past and present, from a lavish New York wedding to the family funeral home in suburban Washington, from a drunken PTA party to a scene of unexpected public violence.

In this resonant odyssey of youth, middle age, ambition and loss, intimacy is fragile and the search for gratification breeds destruction. Here is a family ripped apart by individual desires. And here is a family possibly reborn.