βA sensual and perceptive novel. . . . With humor and humanity, Miller resists the simple scorned-wife story and instead crafts a revelatory tale of the complexitiesβand the absurditiesβof love, infidelity, and grief.βΒ βO, the Oprah Magazine
A brilliantly insightful novel, engrossing and haunting, about marriage, love, family, happiness and sorrow, from New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller.
Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances.Β By all appearances, they are a golden couple.
Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetitesβcurious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annieβs comfortable house in Cambridge.Β Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Grahamβs son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Grahamβs daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Grahamβs last and greatest love.
When Graham suddenly diesβthis man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives togetherβAnnie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him?Β
Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.
Sue Miller is the bestselling author of While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, Inventing the Abbotts, and The Good Mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.