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 as an author and college professor in New England to her childhood growing up poor and abused in the Midwest. Using her friends and her sister Trina as catalysts, Babette tries to come to terms with what was gained and what was lost by treating herself as a character in a story, a character whose attributes and history could be altered, enhanced or edited away at the whim of the author.
From the comfort of her tenured life at a prestigious college in a small New England town, the often honored author ponders how she could know so much about her characters and so little about herself. Interspersed with insights into the creative process of writing fiction, Carter takes the reader on her journey of self-discovery as she experiences the pain of widowhood and the greater pain of a secretive marriage. As an author Babette considers how the hurts she endured as a child have been the motive force behind both her creativity and her success. As a seventy-two year old pain-filled widow, Babette wonders whether it is time to accept her past and move on. With the possibility of change, is there the possibility of self-forgiveness, of a new beginning, of giving and receiving love in all of its manifestations?
