"In this tender and funny novel, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the chaos and joys of falling in love the second time around. When Edward Schuyler, a modest and bookish sixty-two-year-old science teacher, is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable...

Paulie Flax decides to leave Howard, her unfaithful husband of nearly twenty-five years, but on the eve of her defection, Howard suffers a heart attack and belatedly realizes that he truly loves Paulie.

While in foster care, Toby and her sister learn what “family” really means
When Toby’s father dies in a car accident, her mother gets a new job and a cheaper apartment. At first it seems as if everything might be all right, but soon the pressure gets to be too much. Toby’s mother stops cooking, stops talking, and starts crying or laughing at random times. When she is committed to a rest home, Toby and her sister,...

Pregnant, recently widowed, and hoping for transformation, a young woman moves to Los Angeles with her teenage stepdaughter Linda has known only a few worthwhile men, and the good ones have a nasty habit of dying young. While teaching at the Newark branch of the Fred Astaire Dance Studio she meets Wright, who has a Mustang and a thirteen-year-old daughter, Robin. Soon enough Linda and Wright are married and pregnant, but just six weeks after the wedding...

Award-winning novelist Hilma Wolitzer's warm, true-to-life tale of a young woman on a quest for love and certainty Daphne has never met a man who treated her as well as Kenny. The only problem is he's married. Intoxicated by love in the afternoon, she luxuriates in his affection, but the afterglow fades when Kenny drives home to his wife and children. Although he promises Daphne that he'll leave them, she's not sure he will ever be able to give up...

As a young widow and her 13-yearold stepdaughter travel from New Jersey to California they broaden their understanding of what constitutes a family.