In this rich and deeply satisfying novel by the beloved author of The Art of Mending , and Open House , a resilient woman embarks upon an unforgettable journey of adventure, self-discovery, and renewal.  Betta Nolan moves to a small town after the death of her husband to try to begin anew. Pursuing a dream of a different kind of life, she is determined to find pleasure in her simply daily routines. Among those who help her in both expected and unexpected ways are the ten-year-old boy next door, three wild women friends from her college days, a twenty-year-old who is struggling to find his place in the world, and a handsome man who is ready for love. Elizabeth Berg's The Year of Pleasures is about acknowledging the solace found in ordinary things: a warm bath, good food, the beauty of nature, music, friends, and art. "Berg writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, loneliness, love, and hope. And the transcendence that redeems," said Andre Dubus about Durable Goods . And the same could be said about The Year of Pleasures .  Berg is a true women’s writer whose latest exploration of one woman’s joys and sorrows will not disappoint. Her 14th novel (after 2004’s The Art of Mending ) asks how we can find personal connections and transform our lives. Unlike many novels, it actually provides satisfying, if slightly formulaic, answers. Critics agree that the characters, from a college student to Betta’s single-mom neighbor, stand out for their empathic, realistic portrayals. Berg’s poetic language and command of small details relating to character and scenery impressed critics as well. Yet Year of Pleasures may not be Berg’s best effort to date. A few reviewers criticized a relatively weak plot with its obvious message about love, life, and finding the pleasures in ordinary things—even if it’s all true. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. Praise for Elizabeth Berg “The day you open this book you will miss all your appointments, because . . . you will read it straight through. . . . Berg’s writing is to literature what Chopin’s études are to music–measured, delicate, and impossible to walk away from until their completion.” – Entertainment Weekly, about Range of Motion “Lyrical from start to finish . . . Shaped by Berg’s artistic talents, these stories of ordinary people in ordinary situations are anything but ordinary.” — Fort Worth Star-Telegram , about Ordinary Life “Truth rings forth clearly from every page. Berg captures the way women think–and especially the way they talk to other women–as well as any writer I can think of.” – The Charlottesville Observer , about Talk Before Sleep “Berg’s lovely novels examine how some families grasp blindly at the ties that hold them together and some pluck them apart. Mending is no exception.” – Entertainment Weekly , about The Art of Mending “Elizabeth Berg is one of those rare souls who can play with truths as if swinging across the void from one trapeze to another.” – Joan Gould , about Talk Before Sleep ELIZABETH BERG is the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen previous novels, including The Art of Mending, Say When , True to Form , Never Change , and Open House (an Oprah Book Club selection in 2000). Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY Award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, Berg is also the author of a nonfiction book, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True . She lives in Chicago. I had been right to want to drive to the Midwest, taking only the back roads. Every time my husband, John, and I had taken a trip more than a few miles away, we’d flown, and had endured the increasingly irritating airport protocols. I’d finally begun to wear what amounted to pajamas so that I wouldn’t have to all but strip before security guards who seemed either worrisomely bored or, equally worrisome, inflated with a mirthful self-importance. It was hard to believe that air travel had ever been considered glamorous, when now what most people felt was a seesawing between anxiety and exasperation. “Well, folks, looks like our time has been pushed back again,” the captain would say, and everyone would shake their heads and snap their newspapers and mutter to their neighbor. And if there was unexpected turbulence, a quivering silence fell. Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had. Rather than the back of an airline seat or endless, identical rest stops on the interstate, I saw farmhouses in the middle of protective stands of trees, silos reaching for the sky, barns faded to the soft red of tomato soup. The weather everywhere stayed stubbornly warm, and people seemed edgily grateful—what could this mean, sixty-degree weather in November? I drove through one small town