“Compelling. . . breathtaking. . . unique.” — Washington Post Book World Meet the Saving Graces, four very different friends who get together once a week to kick back and take shelter from the trials and triumphs of their lives. Emma, the brazen skeptic with a soft heart, is hopelessly in love with a married man. Rudy, the fighter, is desperately trying to hold on to a deeply troubled marriage. Lee, “the normal one,” longs for a baby—and overwhelming desire that threatens to destroy her idyllic marriage. Isabel, divorced and free, is falling for her neighbor, a man whom she is sure is gay. For the past ten years their unexpected friendship has helped them cope with husbands, lovers, careers, children and everything in between. Though they’ve always been there for each other, when tragedy strikes their love, loyalty, and courage is put to the ultimate test. As this mesmerizing story eloquently captures, men, jobs and crises come and go, but nothing lasts like true friendship. “Readers will feel they’ve known this foursome forever. A bighearted…valentine to the beauty of old-fashioned female friendship.” - Boston Herald Meet the Saving Graces, four of the best friends a woman could ever have. For ten years, Emma, Rudy, Lee, and Isabel have shared a deep affection that has helped them deal with the ebb and flow of expectations and disappointments common to us all. Calling themselves the Saving Graces, the quartet is united by understanding, honesty, and acceptance -- a connection that has grown stronger as the years go by. Though these sisters of the heart and soul have seen it all, talked through it all, they are not prepared for the crisis of astounding proportions that will put their love and courage to the ultimate test. Patricia Gaffney's novels include The Goodbye Summer , Flight Lessons , and The Saving Graces . She and her husband currently live in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. The Saving Graces By Gaffney, Patricia Perennial ISBN: 0060598328 Chapter One Emma If half of all marriages end in divorce, how long does the average marriage last? This isn't a math problem; I'd really like to know. I bet it's less than nine and a half years. That's how long the Saving Graces have been going strong, and we're not even getting restless. We still talk, still notice things about each other, weight loss, haircuts, new boots. As far as I know, nobody's looking around for a younger, firmer member. Truthfully, I never thought we'd last this long. I only joined because Rudy made me. The other three, Lee, Isabel, and -- Joan? Joanne? She didn't last; moved to Detroit with her urologist boyfriend, and we didn't keep up -- the other three didn't strike me at that first meeting as bosom buddy material, frankly. I thought Lee was bossy and Isabel was old -- thirty-nine. Well, I'll be forty next year, enough said there, and Lee is bossy, but she can't help it because she's always right. She really is, and it's a tribute to her exceptional nature that we don't all loathe her for it. The first meeting went badly. We had it at Isabel's house -- this was back when she was still married to Gary. God, these people are straight, I remember thinking. Straight and rich, that's what really got me -- but I'd just moved into a dank little basement apartment in Georgetown for eleven hundred a month because of the address, so I was a little touchy about money. Lee looked as if she'd just come from spa day at Neiman's. Plus she was single, still in graduate school, and teaching special ed. part-time -- you know how much money there is in that -- and yet she lived around the block from Isabel in snooty Chevy Chase, in a house she wasn't renting but owned. Naturally I had it in for these people. All the way home I explained to Rudy, with much wit and sarcasm and disdain, what was wrong with everybody, and why I couldn't possibly join a women's group whose members owned electric hedge trimmers, wore Ellen Tracy, remembered Eisenhower, dated urologists. "But they're nice," Rudy insisted. Which, of course, missed the point. Lots of people are nice, but you don't want to have dinner with them every other Thursday and exchange secrets. The other thing was jealousy. I was small enough to mind that Rudy had a good friend other than me. One night a week she and Lee volunteered to teach reading to inner-city illiterates, and had gotten to know each other during the training. I never worried, then or now, that they would become best friends; I mean, if ever there were two people with nothing in common, it's Lee and Rudy. But I was my old insecure self (then and now), and too neurotic to recognize the potential beauty of the Saving Graces even when it was staring me in the face. We weren't the Saving Graces yet, of course. Even now, we don't go around calling ourselves that in public. It's corny; it sounds like a TV sitcom. Doesn't it? "The Saving Graces," starring Valerie Bertinelli, Susan Dey, and Cybill Shepherd. Notice the