At 44‚ Ellen Flanagan has two adorable girls to raise and a fabulous‚ cozy coffee shop to run. Perhaps her favorite role‚ though‚ is as homeowner: "The house was yellow‚ a clapboard Cape Cod with a white picket fence and a big bay window on one side and Ellen loved it with all her heart." Having lived there for ten years‚ she knows each nook and dent‚ is best friends with her next-door neighbor‚ and has memorized every Douglas fir and star that she can see through her bedroom window. But her husband Sam‚ who's charismatic‚ spontaneous and utterly irresponsible‚ has disappointed her in more ways than she can live with-and their divorce means that Ellen is forced to give up her most treasured place on earth. As she agonizes over leaving the house‚ Ellen begins an unexpected relationship with the husband of the shrewish woman who buys it‚ and her confusion mounts over her dissolving marriage. Set in a beautiful suburb of Portland‚ McCleary's charming‚ true-to-life novel--like Elizabeth Berg's fiction--strikes an emotional chord and explores the very notion of what makes a house a home.
