The randomness of life never impressed itself on Eleanor Ashton until one fateful day. Divorced and in her late fifties, Eleanor decided to retire from her job as a journalist for a popular magazine and freelance from her new home in the English countryside. Finally on her own and starting a new chapter of her life, she leaves one morning to meet a friend for lunch at the pub and ends up in a nearly fatal head-on collision. Her recovery is agonizingly slow. Although she is released from the hospital, she cannot walk without crutches and, due to the injury to her brain, has balance issues and double vision. She can hardly bear the ignominy of her situation and of being totally dependent upon others. Her estranged daughter, Alex, returns to help. Accepting her new reality and learning to live with her new capabilities and the daughter she never got along with are among the many challenges Thorne's latest complex protagonist must face in this edifying, out-of-the-ordinary tale.--Hatton, Maria Copyright 2008 Booklist