Synopses & Reviews
From the author of
Marriage: A Duet comes a gripping novel that explores the intricate relationships of a family as its members grapple with love, loyalty, and their meaning to one another.
With tenderness and wit, Anne Taylor Fleming returns to the complicated terrain of family life love given, wounds inflicted in her novel, As If Love Were Enough. When Clare Laytons actress mother leaves her husband and two small daughters to go off with her lover, their picture-perfect Hollywood family is shattered. Gone are the star-studded parties, the photo-op outings to Palm Springs. Father and daughters are left to cope and hang on, but finally Clares older sister, Louise, also drifts away. Years pass without a word or sighting, and then Louise mysteriously reappears, hoping to enlist Clare in a medical quest to save her oldest, evangelical teenage son. Louises reappearance plunges Clare back into her childhood in the early 60s and into a reckoning with her current role as single career woman and devoted mistress to a married politico. As Clare works toward a sense of peace and personal redemption, the novel examines religion and politics, forgiveness and reconciliation, and the deep tethers between long-estranged sisters trying to find their way back.
Review
"Daring, original, surprising and wise. A marvelous tale of redemption that captured my heart and held me until the end." Mark Salzman, author of Lying Awake and The Soloist
Review
"Anne Taylor Fleming is a wonderful writer brimming with intelligence, sometimes very funny, always honest, wise and real." Anne Lamott, author of Plan B
Synopsis
A mesmerizing, lyrical novel about sisters, secrets, and forgiveness from the acclaimed author of Marriage: A Duet
When Clare Layton, a successful fortysomething New York writer in a (somewhat) fulfilling relationship with a married man, hears from her sister Louise after twenty-seven years, she warily accepts a rapprochement. But Clare soon finds that little is as she believes, about both her sister's current life and their shared Hollywood childhood during the turbulent sixties . . .
About the Author
Anne Taylor Fleming is a nationally recognized journalist. She is a regular on-camera essayist for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and the author of Marriage: A Duet and Motherhood Deferred: A Womans Journey. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Town & Country, and more. She has been a TV commentator for CBS and a radio commentator for NBC. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, journalist and author Karl Fleming.