Five schoolmates share the stories of their parents' estrangements, divorces, and remarriages and the effects these events have had on their lives

Told through the eyes of Alexander and his sister Fanny, we see the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century. Their parents, Oscar and Emilie, are the director and the leading lady of the local theatre company. Oscar's mother and brother are its chief patrons. After Oscar's early death, his widow marries the bishop and moves with her children to his austere and forbidding chancery. The children are immediately...

A woman's dream to forge a new life for herself on the great American plains becomes a test of her pioneering spirit, her inner strength, and her undying faith. It was Marty Claridge's dream to build her new life on the frontier with her husband. But when the courageous pioneer woman is suddenly widowed, she's offered a new opportunity-- to marry a widower in a marriage of convenience. What they did not expect was that the marriage would lead to love...

To her family, Natalie Seebring is a woman who prizes appearances. So when she announces plans to marry a vineyard employee mere months after the death of her husband of fifty-eight years, her son and daughter are stunned. Faced with their disapproval, Natalie decides to write a memoir. Olivia Jones lives vicariously through the old photographs she restores. She and her daughter Tess have no one, so they cling to the fantasy that a big, happy family...