The poor thing was cold and trembling, abandoned on their front doorstep. Dash, impulsive as always, decides on the spot that they should keep it. But her husband, Andrew, thinks it's the craziest thing he's ever heard. A fight over a scruffy little dog doesn't seem like much of a reason to walk out on your husband of twenty years — but the spat over the puppy is just the last of many straws.

Dash is so tired of the faculty parties at Mason-Dixon College that Andrew insists they attend even though he won't mingle with his colleagues, tired of his constant fretting over illnesses he doesn't have, tired of the glass of warm milk he must have every night before bed. Why can't he see that with her mother gone and their daughter off at college, Dash needs something more?

Now, living on her own for the first time in years, Dash can do whatever she wants...if only she could figure out what that is. But every time she starts making plans for the future, she finds herself thinking about the past — remembering the mother she's lost, her daughter's childhood, and the husband she isn't entirely sure she wants to leave behind....

By turns poignant and hilarious — often on the same page— Mad Dash is a novel about the funny ways love has of catching up to us despite our most irrational efforts to leave it behind.

"Gaffney's latest (after The Goodbye Summer) chronicles a 20-year marriage on the verge of imploding. Vivacious, impulsive professional photographer Dash Bateman is the opposite of her worrywart, straitlaced husband, Andrew, a history professor at Mason-Dixon College. After Dash's mother dies and the couple packs off their daughter for her freshman year at college, Dash's crisis of purpose culminates with Dash fleeing her house and husband for an extended stay in the couple's isolated cabin. As they attempt to live without one another, Andrew flirts with a feisty younger colleague and salivates over the chance to be chair of his department (if he can navigate the politics), and Dash finds a substitute mother, daughter and potential love interest. Gaffney tells the story from both Dash's and Andrew's points-of-view, allowing readers to see how the two frustrate and fall in love with one another. The writing is lively, though scenes involving conversations about the nature of love and relationships can turn tedious. The climax teeters on the edge of being over the top, but the denouement is just rosy. It's a lot of fun, and the faults are easily forgiven." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Andrew and Dash Bateman, Patricia Gaffney's communication-challenged couple, are not easy to live with. Nor do they find it easy to live with each other. At first sight, Dash resembles one of those enthusiastic, good-natured folk who always talk your ear off and never hear a word you say. She is quite unlike Andrew, her husband of more than 20 years, who speaks in measured sentences and skirts carefully... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) around any controversial subject. He is a change-averse, neatnik history professor devoted to his students and not interested in the academic rat race. He is also allergic to dogs and obsessively interested in his body's every ache or pain.

As the novel opens, he is fretting that his headache might turn into a migraine. 'I didn't take a pill in time,' he complains piteously. Dash meanwhile muses: 'How many more faculty parties would I have to go to in my lifetime, fifty? A hundred?' 'Mad Dash' is the chronicle of what happens when allergic Andrew sneezes and refuses to let the impulsive Dash adopt a puppy they find one night half-frozen on their doorstep. This predictable reaction from predictable Andrew is the last straw for unpredictable Dash. She realizes with dismay that she is 'married to a man who drinks warm milk.' She leaves him in high dudgeon, 'wrapping the puppy in a chenille throw, hauling open the front door and slamming it behind me.' She flees to their cabin in rural Virginia — taking with her the unhousetrained mutt, by now named Sock to honor its single white paw.

Their two lives run in oddly parallel lines given the divergence of their personalities. Dash, accompanied by Sock, tries to find herself in the village of Dolley (population 649), while Andrew remains in Washington with an aging dog named Hobbes, who spends most of his time wrapped in a tattered blanket. Andrew almost begins an affair with Elizabeth O'Neal, also a history professor, who 'always wears black' and conveniently lives alone in a mansion she inherited from her rich uncle. 'How about a rain check?' is Andrew's less than impulsive response to her offer of recreational sex. Dash almost begins an affair with the stolid but wonderfully competent handyman-farmer Owen Roby, who lives near the Batemans' cabin and raises ducks for the oven. Her almost-infidelity is derailed by the sight of Owen's duck-decapitating equipment.

The scene is vividly set, and we actually come to care about these two diametrically opposed veterans of 20 years together. Those years have encompassed the birth and growing up of Chloe, their only child. Now she has left for college, and other familiar and painful markers of aging are in place for her parents. Dash's mother, whom she adored, has recently died. Andrew's father, formerly a distinguished lawyer, is irritably losing his mental faculties in an assisted living home. The domestic vessel is springing leaks.

Gaffney's most successful novel to date, 'The Saving Graces,' was an early entry in the now well-established genre of 'women's group' fiction, and those four Graces got to mix a lot of fun with their concerns, wrinkles and cancer. They quarrel, make up and understand each other's failings and gifts. Gaffney has a blunt and convincing insight into her characters, particularly the women. She doesn't let Dash off lightly on her journey back to Andrew, and the tone of this novel is darker than 'The Saving Graces.'

Our heroine isn't having much fun. Dash has a bad habit of lashing out at those who don't live up to her expectations. She yells at Chloe, telling her that she's 'impractical, impulsive, unwise and immature.' She alienates her nearests and dearests, only to repent and overwhelm them with tearful apologies. 'I've been unkind, tactless and a bully,' Dash realizes after trying to talk her assistant, Greta, out of marrying her boyfriend. However, she still concludes, 'I'm right. I see it so clearly. Why can't she?'

It is easy to get exasperated with Dash. She changes her mind at the cheep of a cellphone; she lectures her friends and family; she dissolves into tears at the thought of both infidelity and reconciliation. Some of her interior dialogue reads like a psychology textbook. Yet, Gaffney's men are no match for her women. Both Andrew and Owen are one-dimensional — although ghostly cheers may well be heard from readers when Andrew's fist connects unequivocally with Owen's chin — action at last!

However, there isn't a phony bone in Dash's body, and we definitely want to hang around to see how the pieces finally end up on the matrimonial chessboard.

" Reviewed by Reviewed By Brigitte Weeks, a former editor of The Washington Post Book World, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"I fell in love with Mad Dash. Head over heels. It's must reading for any woman who's been married longer than ten years. No one can beat Patricia Gaffney at writing moving and deeply revealing women's fiction that doesn't leave you racing to take an antidepressant when you're done." Susan Elizabeth Phillips, author of Natural Born Charmer

"Patricia Gaffney is a powerful, original voice in women's fiction. Funny, poignant, and true-to-life, Mad Dash is an absolute delight from start to finish. From the moment you begin the crazy journey that is Dash's midlife crisis, you'll see yourself, your friends, and your own family. Don't miss this wonderful novel about one woman's chaotic trip into the dark, secret terrain of her own heart." Kristin Hannah, author of The Things We Do for Love

"Mad Dash is beautiful, witty, and wise; an intensely honest and compelling story of a couple in crisis where no one is to blame and everyone is. Gaffney's portrait of a marriage is both great storytelling and exquisite writing — a wonderful book. Mad Dash is dazzling." Jennifer Crusie, author of Manhunting

"With humor and compassion, Patricia Gaffney tells the story of a marriage, and the flawed and fascinating people inside it. Both touching and funny, Mad Dash is an intimate view, through the eyes of characters who resonate, of the human heart." Nora Roberts

"Patrons will want to read this one for the pure charm of Gaffney's writing." Library Journal

"Gaffney doesn't fuss over plot, instead creating a funny, lighthearted, and tender look at what brings people together, what makes a marriage, and what it takes to keep it together." Booklist

New York Times bestselling author Patricia Gaffney lives in southern Pennsylvania with her husband.