Sweet Ruin Book

Thirty-seven-year-old Elayna Leopold used to be a New York magazine editor, until she and her young family moved to suburban New Jersey. Two years ago, the death of an infant son sent her into a deep depression—-a darkness that begins to lift in the company of a handsome, unattached neighbor. As she fights yearnings that could destroy everything that gives her life shape, a threat to her young daughter's welfare emerges from an unlikely source, throwing Elayna's questionable morality into stark relief—-and forcing her to make choices she never dreamed she would have to make.

Publishers Weekly

Editor of The Bitch in the House and author of My Sister's Bones, Hanauer returns with a compelling turn on a familiar story: a couple recovering from the loss of an infant son. Elayna Leopold, 35, traded in her life as a single magazine editor in Manhattan for life as wife and mother in affluent suburban New Jersey, with lawyer husband Paul. Two years after the death of their son, Oliver, Elayna spends her days caring for six-year-old daughter Hazel and working as a freelance editor of a poetry magazine. Elayna starts to come back to life, her awakening coinciding with the appearance of hot young dog-owner Kevin in the apartment building across the street. As Elayna's entanglement with Kevin threatens her marriage, Hazel's relationship with Elayna's fashion photographer father, Devon, raises the specter of Elayna's childhood and her father's dubious judgment. Excellent characterizations (including Devon, Elayna's adulterous friend Celeste, and day care provider Pansy Dougherty), dialogue and the spot-on representation of the family dynamic make this book difficult to put down. One keeps waiting for something horrific to happen, but instead the story builds slowly and plausibly. What happens is subtle and ambiguous-as in real life. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.