Summary

Grace Holland is a young homemaker living on the coast of Maine with her new small family. One a cold, wet morning in the late spring of 1947, she goes about taking care of twenty-month-old Claire and five-month-old Tom while preparing breakfast for her husband Gene. With World War Two only recently over and a famine in Europe, Grace has been struggling to find meat and fresh fruit for the table. Lighting her first cigarette of the morning, she and Gene discuss his job as a surveyor in Kittery. It takes him away for long stretches at a time. Their marriage is passionless, yet Grace tries to convince herself that she should be grateful for a talkative, successful husband. After Gene leaves, Grace visits her closest friend Rosie. She is a beautiful redheaded woman married to a car mechanic with two young children of...