"It is the first shower that wets."

"Marriage is like picking the place where you're going to live for the next fifty years by using a wall map, a blind fold, and what you really, truly, deeply believe is your lucky dart."

"Our marriage, like all marriages, was happy until it wasn't."

Judith was living the dream and had the sort of marriage to Malcolm she had envisioned for herself during her college years at Stanford. Her life was settled and serene, until a little 'swerve' occurred which she might have intended to occur, "maybe I'd actually plotted it out in one of those corners of your brain or heart that you access only in dreams." Yet, she believed in a sort of love that "picks you up in Akron, Ohio, and sets you down in Rio de Janeiro." She'd had that with Willy Blunt in high school, one of the secrets she carried with her. When she starts to suspect that Malcolm might be cheating on her, Judith allows herself to explore the secrets she'd suppressed for almost three decades.

This book appealed to me on so many levels and I suspect it will stay with me for quite a while. What if....who hasn't wondered how our lives would be different had we made different choices in our youth...we had married another person....chosen a job in a different city. Why does that first lover still hold a special place in the secret spaces in your heart or your occasional dreams? What if....

A haunting, beautifully written story of love, marriage, and roads not taken, tinged with dangerous choices. I loved this book.

Recommended by Ellen

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