Though Iris Stern considers herself a modern woman, with a successful academic career and a happy marriage, she still holds steadfast to her old-fashioned sensibilities. But as the mother of three adult children, each with their own lives and burdens to bear, she often finds those sensibilities called into question when confronted with the choices her children have made.

What happens when the picture-perfect marriage dissolves? In her unsparing evocation of a family in crisis, Belva Plain goes to the heart of a marriage between a naive young artist and her handsome physician husband. At first, everything is idyllic. Then one terrible night she commits an act she will regret for the rest of her life. An act that gives her husband the ultimate weapon: blackmail. The price of his silence is uncontested custody of their...

At thirty-six, Jennie Rakowsky's dreams were coming true. She was about to marry a wonderful man, her career as a lawyer was sky-rocketing, and she had never been more beautiful. Then the secret she had hidden for nineteen years threatened to shatter it all. From growing up as a child of impoverished Holocaust survivors to discovering the glittering, exclusive world of America's Jewish aristocracy, Jennie had learned how important family and heritage

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