From the surf of Maine to lakeshore Milwaukee to Canada's Pacific mists, each of the Wallace women-- a mother and her two daughters-- is looking across her treasured home waters to the horizons of change...

MARGARET has gone from a matronly doctor's wife who carried everyone's burdens to a svelte single, her hard-won freedom invaded by a compassion she dare not feel...

Her daughter DAISY turns desperately to her mother-- pregnant with her third child, her cozy, sloppy, domestic world ripped apart by her husband's elopement with a sexy young journalist...

Sophisticated DALE's heady, obsessive passion for a co-teacher is shadowed by her mother's and sister's divorces. Is this the perilous price tag of love and belonging?

These three women-- warm, funny and courageous-- are about to ride a bittersweet merry-go-round of joy and pain, love and illusion, reconciliation and rediscovery, in this classic bestseller that has won the hearts of women everywhere.