Overview

When her husband Bob dies, a man she loved but from whom she kept many secrets, Babette Carter is set adrift. Untethered from her marriage, she finds herself backtracking across her life from an esteemed author and professor at an elite Massachusetts college to her childhood growing up poor and abused in Indiana. Using her friend Elaine, her argumentative sister Trina, and her literally one-time lover Cody Black as catalysts, Babette tries to come to terms with what has been gained and what lost by treating herself as a character in a story--a character whose attributes and history were altered, enhanced, or edited away at the whim of its author. From the comfort of her tenured life at Jefferton College in Western Massachusetts, the often-honored author experiences the pain of widowhood and the greater pain of a secret-filled marriage. In her office, alone at home, but mostly standing before her husband's grave, Babette ponders how she could know so much about her characters and so little about herself. Interspersed with fending off Cody Black's re-awakened amorous attention, sparring with Trina over the wounds and scars of childhood, and trying to find the energy and inspiration to move forward on her latest novel, Babette begins her journey of self-discovery. Babette, the author, considers how the hurts she endured as a child and nurtured as an adult have been a major force behind her creativity and success. Babette, the seventy-two-year-old pain-filled widow, wonders whether it is time to accept her past and move on. Over the course of a year, the widow considers whether, along with the certainty of change, there exist the possibilities of forgiveness of self and others, of taking steps, however tentative, along new paths, and of experiencing love in its many manifestations.

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