Anne Roiphe was not quite seventy years old when her husband of nearly forty years unexpectedly passed away. But it was not until her daughters placed a personal ad in a literary journal that Roiphe began to consider the previously unimagined possibility of a new man. Eloquent and astute, moving between heartbreaking memories of her marriage and the pressing needs of a new day-to-day routine, "Epilogue" takes us on her journey into the unknown world of life after love.

Water from the Well is a journey four thousand years back to the time of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah. The graceful prose of renowned author Anne Roiphe brilliantly captures these biblical women and makes their fascinating stories come alive. As each story unfolds, we find that the matriarchs had to overcome the same devastating obstacles women face today--infertility, lust, abandonment, and uncertainty--yet they managed to cope with betrayal, death, sacrifice, and jealousy while dealing with the emerging reality of a new faith. This remarkable volume demonstrates how their lives helped to lay the foundation of womanhood in the Western world. Combining the deep insight of Bruce Feiler with the narrative skill of Antonia Fraser, Anne Roiphe delivers a fascinating work that deftly brings these four biblical matriarchs into our own age.

Widowed novelist, near seventy, ex-Park Avenue girl, ex-beatnik, ex-many other things too complicated to list here, loves big parties, summers at the beach, grandchildren, seeks interesting man for dinner and a movie.

Anne Roiphe was not quite seventy years old when her husband of nearly forty years unexpectedly passed away. But it was not until her daughters placed a personal ad in a literary journal that Roiphe began to consider the previously unimagined possibility of a new man. Moving between heartbreaking memories of her marriage and the pressing needs of a new day-to-day routine, "Epilogue" takes us on her journey into the unknown world of life after love.

Roiphe decides to reenter the dating world. But between new lunches, coffee dates, and e-mail exchanges, she wrestles with an unsettling loneliness. Recollections of marriage evoke complex, unexpected emotions on her journey through grief toward new companionship. In beautifully wrought vignettes, she recalls hailing a cab for the first time and learning to lock and unlock the front door--tasks her husband had always done.

Eloquent and astute, "Epilogue" tells the story of love rekindled and life remade. Roiphe offers us an elegant literary pastiche not of grief, but of hope and renewal.

A Novel by the Acclaimed Author of Fruitful and If You Knew Me

Author of seven highly acclaimed novels, and Fruitful, a nonfiction work on motherhood that became a National Book Award nominee, Anne Roiphe is known for her outspoken and fearless exploration of feminist issues -- and the impact they have on the human heart. Here, in Lovingkindness, she probes the powerful relationship between mothers and daughters ...

Annie Johnson is an accomplished contemporary woman. Widowed early, she has worked hard for herself and her child; above all, she has given her daughter a feminist upbringing. But to Annie's dismay, aimless, twenty-two-year-old Andrea suddenly joins an ancient, rigidly religious sect and seeks an arranged marriage. And now Annie must not only struggle with this potential disaster, but discover her true place in her daughter's life.

"In Lovingkindness, Anne Roiphe has made a contribution to the literature of mothers and daughters, of the war between generations, rightly offering no simple answers, but instead giving us a heroine who is willing to face herself, her own life and responsibilities, with the same relentless intelligence she applies to everyone else."

-Philadelphia Inquirer

"A graceful writer ... has managed to weave those philosophic issues that concern her into a tapestry of warm, real life."

-Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Lovingkindness takes the mother-daughter theme that has so dominated feminist literature and turns it on its side .... Will have meaning for anyone who has ever been faced with the need to let go of a child, to pay attention, but to allow it freedom."

-Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"By turns caustic and lyrical ... the story rings true, especially in reflecting the heartache that ensues when a child repudiates parents, culture, and homeland."

-Publishers Weekly

"Confronting a feminist mother's nightmare ... this intense personal story is a cliffhanger."

-Ms.

Anne Roiphe's splendid new novel is a refreshingly authentic, vivid, and often funny view of the way people meet and fall in love. Dazzling and delighting readers with her portrayal of character, she introduces us to Leah, a biologist no longer in her thirties and still unmarried, who has taken a leave from her job to spend the winter at her beach house. In this summer resort town in the off-season Leah meets Ollie, a high school English teacher feeling the universal frustration of trying to teach "Moby-Dick" to teenagers, and the conflicted emotions of taking responsibility for his handicapped sister, Sally. When Ollie and Leah begin unexpectedly to fall in love, it is with all the complications of lives already well established and the habits of half a lifetime spent alone. And for both, a commitment means making compromises, revealing secrets, and facing a crisis that can either destroy or redeem their relationship...in Anne Roiphe's totally absorbing, endearing, and eloquently told tale of the way things really are.