The late novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard led his list of Rules for Good Writing with this advice: Never open a book with weather. His second rule: Avoid prologues.

Author Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, whose The Nest was a bestseller in 2016, goes one for two on these rules in Lake Effect. There’s a prologue, but its first sentence refers to sex — specifically, to a copy of The Joy of Sex, which turns out to have a tragic long-term impact on a family in Rochester, New York.

Sweeney comfortably name-checks many of that city’s most significant institutions between 1977 and 1998, the period during which Lake Effect takes place: Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Midtown Plaza (the nation’s first indoor shopping mall), the Red Wings AAA baseball team, the Eastman School of Music, the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper (and the now-defunct afternoon Times-Union). Several scenes involve a fictitious grocery chain called Finnegan’s that’s very similar to Wegmans, which began operations in Rochester and is still based there. It’s not surprising that Sweeney has the city down cold: She’s a native (and so am I).

The central characters are Sam and Nina, a middle-aged couple whose marriage ends when Nina reads the revolutionary book and pursues her own extracurricular Joy. Their daughters, Clara and Bridie, are stunned when Nina runs away from inattentive Sam, who’s secretly gay, and marries another man, Finn (who runs Finnegan’s), in an era when that sort of thing was rare.

The stigma affects the sisters’ lives at school and their relationship with each other, which eventually grows frosty. Both act out in one way or another, and it’s hard not to think of Philip Larkin’s insight in his 1974 poem “This Be the Verse”: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.”

Although there are dozens of other characters — it’s hard to keep track of them all, and the various subplots rarely matter — much of the story is told from the point-of-view of Clara, the elder daughter. She’s the most devastated by her mother’s action because it leads to a stormy parting with her own romantic interest, Dune. She copes by learning how to cook, and she’s good at it.

At this point, you may have noticed that a weather word of one sort or another has sneaked into nearly every paragraph of this review so far. Lake Effect itself is less subtle. While it doesn’t open with the weather, it relentlessly hits readers over the head with a snow shovel to make the point that Rochester is often cold and grey.

Early on, there’s an explanation of the book’s title:

“Western New York’s lake effect weather was most pernicious during the winter, but the ever-shifting atmospheric systems over the Great Lakes could also bring in a sudden rush of clouds and thunderstorms to ruin a perfectly lovely summer day. Or not.”

Later, a woman contemplating a move to Rochester is reluctant “to relocate to a place that regularly appears on the list of the gloomiest cities in the United States.” The top story in the newspaper is “256 Hours Without Appreciable Sunshine.” Nina goes to a museum, notices that a Monet painting is called “Waterloo Bridge: Veiled Sun,” and quickly concludes that it makes perfect sense because “Not even the paintings in Rochester were allowed full sun.”

More than halfway through the book, Sweeney is still piling on:

“Rochester made it hard not to feel that it was meteorologically against you, particularly when the winter came early and refused to leave.”

And then, abruptly, we’re in New York City 17 years later, as Clara, now a cook in a restaurant, wakes up in a stranger’s bed, suffering from a brutal hangover. The mystery man turns out to be a helpful career connection, and before long, they move in together. But then Clara’s old high-school boyfriend, Dune, comes calling to invite her to his wedding — to Bridie.

Clara’s been ignoring phone calls from Rochester and hasn’t opened snail mail from her sister, so she’s somehow taken by surprise. Meanwhile, she’s said something very unwise in a very public way and will need to undo her mistake before she can show her face again in her hometown.

Can the sun shine once more after so many years of anger and estrangement? Maybe. Maybe not. This book explores all manner of bad weather.

Randy Cepuch is a member of the Independent’s board of directors and a frequent reviewer. He’s proud that, a few years ago, the Red Wings baseball team’s promotions folks responded to a New York Post columnist calling the city “grim and depressing” by producing a bestselling line of apparel making fun of the insult and by getting the writer to throw out the first pitch at a game. She wrote a followup column calling Rochester “a beautiful city” that “couldn’t have been more fun or welcoming.”