Matters of Chance is a glorious, captivating novel about Morgan and Maude Shurtliff, who fall in love and marry in the years before World War II. Unable to have children of their own, Morgan and Maude adopt twin girls. The four go home to their beautiful house in the country outside of New York City and begin to settle into what they hope will be a long and happy life. When the twins are still young, Morgan is called to serve in World War II, leaving Maude to raise her daughters alone. Jeannette Haien has rendered Morgan's war experiences with astonishing detail, just as she has captured the American post-war era with a precision that is unrivaled in recent fiction. In chronicling the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and disappointments of Maude and Morgan's marriage, Jeannette Haien has written a love story to savor. Suspenseful, romantic in the truest sense, heartbreaking and always engrossing, Matters of Chance brings to mind the best of Edith Wharton in the broadness of its scope, in its unforgettable descriptions of an age and in the vividness of its characters. When she's not giving piano recitals worldwide, Haien is doing things like winning the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction for her work The All of It. Her new novel features a young family's struggles as the father goes off to World War II. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Septuagenarian Haien's second novel (The All of It, 1986) is a simplistic though satisfying and pretty much traditional family chronicle. The word ``saga'' may be too dramatic to describe this history of the Shurtliff clan, since their lives are happily free of long- term suffering, shocking revelations, or mysterious people. Instead, Haien has crafted an old-fashioned tale in which nothing much happens but ordinary life. Beginning with the courtship and subsequent marriage of Maud and Morgan Shurtliff, two upper-crust Ohioans, the novel paints an attractive picture of the young couple, rich, kind, and deeply in love. The only shadow thrown across their lives is Maud's infertility, which leads the pair to the eccentric Miss Zenobia Sly and her Tilden-Herne Adoption Agency. They bring home happiness in the form of twin infant girls, Caroline and Julia. Soon after, WW II erupts, and the reader follows Morgan's ordeal in the Navy. After the war, a more somber Morgan returns home, picks up his law practice, and prospers; the girls grow; and the family buys a large manor house. All the while, Morgan keeps in contact with Miss Sly (against Maud's wishes: the elderly lady is a reminder of their girls' adoption), and the two form a warm, confidential (and platonic) friendship. Time passes, the girls go off to Bryn Mawr, and just as Morgan and Maud are preparing for a long European holiday in celebration of partial parental freedom, Maud dies of a brain hemorrhage. The latter parts of the story are devoted to the ways in which the family puts itself back together, how life moves on, and how love blooms again. Not plot but character creates the charm here: The relationship between Morgan and his charismatic father, his confidences with Miss Sly, and his interactions with his daughters are all depicted in affectionate detail. Far from groundbreaking fiction, but a gratifying, companionable read nonetheless. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. In Matters of Chance , Haien takes us through more than three decades of one family's pleasures and sorrows, detailing its members' enviable ability to accept the vagaries of fate. These people are old-fashioned in all the best ways--they know that love is what counts and that it, along with decency and compassion, will sustain them. -- The New York Times Book Review, Ruth Coughlin Matters of Chance is a glorious, captivating novel about Morgan and Maude Shurtliff, who fall in love and marry in the years before World War II. Unable to have children of their own, Morgan and Maude adopt twin girls. The four go home to their beautiful house in the country outside of New York City and begin to settle into what they hope will be a long and happy life. When the twins are still young, Morgan is called to serve in World War II, leaving Maude to raise her daughters alone. Jeannette Haien has rendered Morgan's war experiences with astonishing detail, just as she has captured the American post-war era with a precision that is unrivaled in recent fiction. In chronicling the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and disappointments of Maude and Morgan's marriage, Jeannette Haien has written a love story to savor. Suspenseful, romantic in the truest sense, heartbreaking and always engrossing, Matters of Chance brings to mind the best of Edith Wharton in the broadness of its scope, in its unforgettable descriptions of an age and in the vividness of its characters. Jeannette Haien is the author of the acclaimed novel The All of It , winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts