Josephine
Twenty-eight. Daughter of Paul and Isobel Hibberd, from Pordand, Oregon. Granddaughter of Paul Hibberd I, otherwise known as "The First Dentist in the Family." Best friend of Rebecca Mosely, mother of two in Beverly Hills. Married to Mike O'Leary, her college sweet- heart, even though she cheated on him four times, once with Derek Hutton, who went on to be a much-loved soap opera actor on Guiding Light. Forced Mike to move to Los Angeles so she could become President of a Movie Studio, just as her father, Dr. Paul Hibberd, big- toothed and fleshly lipped, told her that she could.

Carla
Forty-one. Daughter of Candace (alive) and John (deceased) Trousse, from Wilmington, Delaware. Niece of Paulette Giberson, the long- faced but handsome woman featured in both Vanity Fair and National Geographic for feeding famine victims in Ethiopia while financing children's vaccinations in Accra, Ghana. First cousin of Phillip Giberson, product of Paulette's brief attempt at wedded bliss with British scholar E. Rupert Giberson and successful lawyer at media conglomerate Studio X. Never married, in debt, and fired from her last job four .months ago. B.A. from Lehigh, M.F.A. from NYU, and a Ph.D. from Columbia just as soon as she turns in her dissertation. In love with David Stegner, who lives in Pasadena, and who has slept with her approximately once, at cousin Phillip's wedding nine years earlier. She cannot remember her father, John Trousse, who died of acute heart failure when Carla was three. Carla is sure that if she had a father she could remember she would be able to figure out that most arcane of equations: Having x (intellectual scholarship) and y (verbal fluidity), she wants to solve for z, that as-Jet-abstruse combination of personality traits that would finally push her from her rotting apartment in Greenwich Village and onto the world stage, under hot and deserved bright lights.

Excerpted from The Difference Between You and Me