[Epub commercial 390] • Un si joli visage

It’s the eve of her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and Mary Gooch is waiting

for her husband, Jimmy, to come home. But Mary isn’t just waiting for Jimmy.

She is waiting for a mother who accepts her, children she is unable to have, a

life beyond the well-worn path from her bedroom to the refrigerator. Mary is

waiting for her life to start.

As she waits for Jimmy, the night passes into day and it becomes clear that he

isn’t coming home. A letter left in the mailbox confirms her worst fears and

Mary is left alone to make a difficult decision. Should she break free from

her inertia and salvage her marriage? Or is the pull of the familiarity of her

home, the predictability of her daily routines, too strong to resist?

For the first time in her life, Mary decides to leave and boards a plane to

California. She flies across the country in a desperate attempt to find her

husband. The clothes, the marriage, the home that had given her a place to

hide for so long are all gone. Mary soon finds that the bright sun and broad

vistas of California force her to look up from the pavement, stop waiting and

start living. What she finds when she does is an inner strength she’s never

felt before. Through it all, Mary not only finds kindred spirits, but reunites

with a more intimate stranger no longer sequestered by fear and habit:

herself.