Lehrer tells the story of so many women of her generation: displaced from their roots and ensconced in another life, capable and mature, yet sometimes not knowing--until they return to them--how far they've grown away from those roots and how deep those roots are. H.A., a 45-year-old, twice-divorced, hotshot Boston political consultant, finds out that how-far and how-deeply when she goes back to Texas to visit her ailing mother. Bogged down with a candidate whose morality she questions and a volatile relationship with a much younger man, H.A. escapes those situations only to find herself in the one inescapable situation: family. By interweaving fragments from H.A.'s childhood with her present-day dilemmas, Lehrer creates a haunting, rich story. ~--Mary Ellen Sullivan

The author of Best Intentions (1987) offers a rather meandering tale of a 45-year-old Boston-based political consultant whose life turns to mush as she struggles to deal with the ghosts of her Texas childhood. The man in the moon disappears sometimes, H.A.'s father used to tell her, but little girls shouldn't give up hope of seeing him again, because the moon always comes back. Not so the father, unfortunately--he dies when H.A. is five years old, and for decades after, his precocious daughter blames herself for his absence. But longing for her father is not all that drives H.A.--her smart- talking, cigarette-puffing mother and aunts back in Rollins, Texas, form the immutable bedrock of the grown-up H.A.'s self-image as she plows through a series of love affairs and marriages and into a career selling aspiring politicians to the public. Something happens, though, as H.A. approaches middle age and must face her mother's physical and mental decline, the assured death from cancer of her first love and lifelong intermittent lover, the difficulties of initiating yet another love affair--this one with a professional colleague substantially her junior--and the fact that Ralph Stone, the senatorial contender she and the colleague both represent, is turning out to be a world-class liar and sneak. Unsure what went wrong in a life that should have worked out as planned, H.A. flees to Rollins to renew herself in the waters of family solidarity. There, she takes a cue from her female relatives, dealing with one problem at a time until, on the surface at least, satisfying solutions are achieved all around. Vague writing, muddled climaxes and unpredictably seesawing emotions--all mar this well-intentioned midlife-crisis novel.

Lehrer ( Best Intentions ) explores the nebulousness of fulfillment in this affecting, realistic portrait of a woman who almost--but never entirely--feels she has it all. Twice-divorced H.A. (for Hope Annabella) Reese, 45, is a highly respected political consultant in Boston. Beneath her polished appearance, however, she feels uneasy about the Senate candidate she currently represents, a real-estate investor whose dealings have harmed the environment. Beset by doubt, she flees to her childhood home in Rollins, Tex., only to find her mother laid low by a stroke and the man who was her first love also ailing. Such distressing setbacks only make H.A. more determined to personally set things right; it's clear that she has appropriated the protective role of her father, who became the distant and idealized ``man in the moon'' after his death when H.A. was six years old. Lehrer convincingly shows how multiple dilemmas force the protagonist to reconsider her lifelong discontent and evasion of others' love. This moving tale of regret and compromise values a sense of family over lonely career advancement, yet thankfully avoids positing marriage and children as a strong woman's only reprieve from alienation. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved