| This is a novel that speaks for the rich and invaluable experience gained through every- day living, for the many rewards and assets accumulated along the way. It is an affirma- tion of life in all its stages, despite all its painful times. Alice Gilman, a widow just past seventy, is spending the summer alone in a cottage on an island off the New England coast. Her son, Philip, his wife, and their three young daughters occupy a home just up the beach. Another granddaughter, child of Alice s daughter, visits for a few weeks with her grandmother at the cottage. Later, Alice s daughter and her family and Philip s two sons of a previous marriage come to the island. It is the first time that the entire family, ordinarily separated by great distance, is together. As Alice watches her family relate to one another, form new attachments, renew old relationships, sort out their current crises, she reflects on her past with appreciation and gratitude, reliving it with excitement through the good and difficu It times, recalling her ownnloments of crisis to see exactly how her ex-perience was survived and added a new di-mension to her life. She considers the present,observing her children and grandchildrenwith intense interest, some concern, andmuch joy; and she looks to her own future andtheirs with eager anticipation. |
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