Three women in fairly happy marriages, question the sacrifices they make, the choices to support their spouses, to take control of their own needs, and settle for the humdrum lifestyle they are accustomed to. Together they bond and make the changes in their lives that afford everyone some happiness and empowerment.

New Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, a journalist, travel to Italy with their friends from Maine--Finn, his wife Taylor, and their daughter Snow. 'From the beginning,' says Taylor, 'it was a conspiracy for Lizzie and Finn to be together.' Told Rashomon-style in alternating points of view, the characters expose and stumble upon lies and infidelities past and present. Snow, ten years old and precociously drawn into a far more adult drama,...

Wolitzer's most important and ambitious book to date, The Wife is a wise, sharp-eyed, compulsively readable story about a woman forced to confront the sacrifices she's made in order to achieve the life she thought she wanted. But it's also an unusually candid look at the choices all men and women make for themselves, in marriage, work, and life. With her skillful storytelling and pitch-perfect observations, Wolitzer invites intriguing questions about...

Mattie is a fiercely independent woman battling ALS; Don, her deeply devoted husband, is facing a future without his one true love; and Rose, their struggling caregiver, is a young single mother who feels trapped in her life. With each item that is discovered [in an heirloom hope chest]--including a beloved doll, family dishes, an embroidered apron, and an antique Christmas ornament--the hope chest connects Mattie, Don, and Rose to each other and...

Josie and Frank Moore are happy--at least Josie thinks they are. As parents of two young girls in the Chicago suburbs, their days can be both busy and monotonous, and sometimes Josie wonders how she became a harried forty-something mother rather than the driven career woman she once was. But Frank is a phenomenal father, he's handsome and charismatic, and he still looks at his wife like she's the beautiful woman he married more than a decade ago....

From the outside, the Knowles family appeared to have it all, a loving marriage, two beautiful children, a home in an idyllic part of the countryside in upstate New York. Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice, his wife, Annie, teaches at a local college. But Annie's role as the doctor's wife has worn thin, and Michael has answered the call of an old flame to moonlight at the local women's health center, the city's only provider...

A thirty-something tax auditor who doesn't overlook a thing, Lucy Shoreman had been blind to her husband's philandering. Now, as he lies on his deathbed, she decides she's not going through it alone. She opens Artie's little black book and begins calling his sweethearts. And to her great surprise, one by one, they show up: the one who hates him, the one who owes her life to him, the one he turned into a lesbian, and the one he taught to dance. And...