Product Information

The novel opens with a chance meeting between two old friends. One proposes to tell the other a story about his life years ago…

Cecile, Norma, and Amanda are three college friends with varied backgrounds, whose lives become intricately intertwined when Amanda, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, marries Norma’s brother, Larry, a real-estate broker who works for his father, Laurence. When Amanda becomes pregnant as a result of an affair with Laurence, her father-in-law, her life is thrown into turmoil. After little Stevie is born, she flees, and Norma and her new husband, Lester, take care of the depressed Larry and the new baby.

Meanwhile, Cecile’s loving marriage to the talented architect Roger is faltering. Roger is torn between following his father-in-law Amos’ wishes to develop a railroad yard project and his own desire to preserve historic land. Finally he succumbs, and produces an amazing plan to renovate the railroad yard. But things take an odd twist when Norma, known for her phenomenal photographic memory, memorizes the plans and gives them to Larry, her brother, to use as his own in an attempt to help him restore his life and his career. Amos and Alfred, Norma’s father-in-law who has been assisting Larry, have a bitter confrontation over Norma’s betrayal of Roger, and the two friends part ways until a meeting years later brings them together again, and they relive all the heartbreak and pain, triumphs and joys of their lives so many years ago.

A wife’s infidelity, a husband’s heartbreak, the complex and interwoven lives of family and friends…Belva Plain captures them all with her unerring gaze into the heart of human relationships. Belva Plain’s unrivaled power as a storyteller guarantees that she will continue to win fans and acclaim for generations to come.