“Miller depicts [her characters] with grace and elegance, enriching their perceptions with strands of connecting images and intertwined history.... A very moving book.”—New York Times Book Review

From bestselling author Sue Miller comes the poignant story of a mother and son that touches on the deepest concerns about love, art, family, and life.

Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and has become a famous writer at age seventy-two. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease and staying with her architect son Alan, Lily must cope with her fading powers as well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her children and ended her marriage. For Alan, her visit raises old questions about his relationship with her, about the choices he has made in his own life, and about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief.

Profound and deeply affecting, The Distinguished Guest reveals a family trying to understand the meaning of its life together, while confronting inevitable loss and the vision of an immeasurably altered future.