Ellen believes her mother to be devoid of any higher ambitions. Kate is a homemaker and very happy to be, striving to be the perfect hostess and housekeeper.
The intellectual bond she enjoyed with George made Ellen look down somewhat on her mother, Kate. George is a literature professor and head of the English Department at a college near the town where Ellen grew up, and always pushed Ellen to seek perfection and achievement. Ellen credits her drive to her father, George, with whom she had a very close relationship growing up. She is very happy with her life: Her professional life keeps improving, she has a boyfriend she enjoys very much, even if she is with him for the wrong reasons, and the sort of apartment that people kill for in a city like New York. Ellen goes back in time to begin her story properly, flashing back to when she was a twenty-four year old working as an editor and living in New York City. She describes the difference between jail and prison, then sequels into a general impression of her family and childhood.
The story begins with the narrator, Ellen Gulden, speaking from jail. Quindlen uses an extended flashback to tell a story mainly concerned with the emotional bond between a mother and daughter that subtly shifts into a low-stakes mystery. One True Thing is a novel by Anna Quindlen, published in 1994.
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