Leaving Sophie Dean

Adam and Sophie Dean's good-enough marriage could easily have lasted forever. But Adam succumbs to pressure from his mistress to leave Sophie, and in the course of his carefully prepared farewell speech, Sophie has a revelation: unless she leaves him in the family home in the role of primary caregiver, he'll have a severely diminished role in the lives of their two sons.

So while Adam continues to live in the suburban house he despises-with his two children and his angry mistress, who'd never planned for this turn of events-Sophie sets out alone into an alluring new life nearby, close enough to see her sons every day, but far removed from her former life of domestic drudgery. As she and Adam grow into their new roles, they discover what it actually means to act in their children's best interests, and that the end of a marriage can be a beginning.

Alexandra Whitaker is the daughter of Rodney Whitaker, a.k.a. Trevanian, from whom she learned to write in the course of a happy and fruitful apprenticeship that included collaborating on his last two novels. As a child she lived all over the United States and in Europe, a perpetual 'new girl' and a keen language learner. She has written for children and for film, also short fiction. She lives with her husband and child in Spain and France.