Cathleen Schine

"Joy Bergman is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would prefer. She won't take their advice, and she won't take an antidepressant. Her marriage to their father, Aaron, has lasted through health and dementia, as well as some phenomenally lousy business decisions. The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don't just grow,...

Betty Weissman loses her elegant New York apartment when her husband of nearly fifty years divorces her for what he says are irreconcilable differences, but is in actuality another woman. She and her two grown daughters who quite unexpectedly find themselves the middle-aged products of a broken home and whose own lives are in varying states of disrepair and confusion regroup in a small, run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. As they wrestle...

The effect on Helen MacFarquhar, a 40-year-old divorcee, of a passionate letter which arrives in her bookstore. It is addressed "Dear Goat" and signed "Ram." As she tries to guess who Ram could be, the power of suggestion takes over, igniting a romance with the young student working in the store for the summer.