The Golds were not an exceptional family in suburban Philadelphia. Mr. Gold ran a dry-cleaning business, and his wife, Cassie, was a nurse. They had two daughters, Isabel and Jeannie. Mrs. Gold was unpredictable and moody, prone to napping and taking long baths, but it was nothing that couldn't be soothed with a good cup of tea. Until she killed herself. Haunted by her mother's incomprehensible act, Isabel Gold tests out identity after identity, role after role, trying to inhabit the space left by Cassie and to crack the mystery of her death. Tea tells Isabel's story as she yearns to become an actress and falls in and out of love: at eight, with born-again Ann; at sixteen, with the self-assured Lottie, listening to Joni Mitchell records and smoking dope; at seventeen, with theatrical, feminist Rebecca; and at twenty-two, with avant-garde Thea, in whose experimental film Isabel is starring. Darkly poignant, sincerely funny and erotic, Tea is about struggling to carve out a space for oneself against a calamitous family history.