The senator's wife - Sue Miller

Love came late to Meri, but in a rush: she met Nathan at thirty-six, he moved in a month later, and they married a month after that. Now they are exchanging their comfortable mid-western existence for life in a college town in New England, a house of their own, a more responsible teaching job for Nathan - a new life that Meri is not sure she even wants. Though she loves her husband, with an erotic heat that shows no sign of cooling, some rebel force in her struggles with these changes, and she feels there is trouble ahead for their marriage.

When they find the just the right house, Meri baulks at the expense, at the sheer adult-ness of it all, but Nathan is full of the possibilities of the place, and boyishly excited by the fact that their next-door neighbour is the distinguished Senator Tom Naughton, a political hero of his, now a man in his seventies. The senator is nowhere to be seen, but Meri strikes up an unexpected friendship with his wife, the elegant, patrician Delia - the very antithesis of Meri, with all her smudgy tomboy sexiness.

The more Meri comes to know about the Naughtons, the more she is drawn to this private, poised woman, sensing that she has much to learn from her - about marriage, love and motherhood. But the closer, too, she comes to a final, terrible breach of trust that could ruin everything.

Beautifully written and alive with telling, truthful detail, The Senator's Wife is a completely absorbing story about the sacrifices love demands of us all.