The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories

"I looked out the window and was filled with contentment. I was on a train. There was no landscape, ugly or beautiful, to demand my attention . . . None of the passengers within my view were badly dressed. I had the right book with me . . . I was happily married but alone, nothing in the immediate past to regret, nothing in the immediate future to fear. In between -- the best place to be."

At fifty, Grace Hanford has lived long enough to be a daughter, a stepdaughter, a girlfriend, a sist...