Financial journalist Rebecca Bloomwood seeks solace from the boredom and pressures in life with her shopping, a solution that brings her close to financial disaster, until she encounters a story that will change her life.
Returning to her small home town in Vermont to care for her Alzheimer's patient mother, reserved forty-one-year-old nurse Kate finds herself inadvertently drawn into the murder investigation of a young girl, a case that reminds her of the death of an impoverished childhood friend years earlier.
Believing her marriage to Andy to be perfect in every way, Ellen runs into former flame Leo and wonders why she has been unable to forget him even though they brought out the worst in each other.
In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.
TV financial guru Becky Bloomwood has finally paid off her debts and credit card bills, until her boyfriend, Luke, invites her to accompany him when he moves to New York, and she discovers sample sales, power lunches, and Fifth Avenue.