A spellbinding novel of love and betrayal that explores what it means to be a good wife.
Thirty years ago Jo Becker's bohemian life ended when she found her best friend brutally murdered in the house they shared in Cambridge. Now Jo has everything: work she loves, a devoted husband, three grown daughters, a beautiful Massachusetts farm-house. And if occasionally she feels a stranger to herself, she need only look at her daughters of her husband to recall the satisfactions of family, community, and marriage.
But when an old housemate settles in her small town, the fabric of her life begins to unravel: Jo hesitantly begins a relationship that returns her to the darkest moment of her past and imperils all she loves.
'While I Was Gone' is an exquisitely suspenseful novel about how casually a marriage can be destroyed, how a good wife can be taken by surprise by her own ability to place all she holds dear at risk. In expert strokes, Sue Miller captures the ease with which we abandon each other, and the gentleness and care with which we fight our way back. An extraordinary book from a much-loved American writer.
