Westchester Burning: Portrait of a Marriage - Tapa dura

In a candid, intimate portrait of the unraveling of a thirty-year relationship, the author describes how her seemingly perfect life with four beautiful children and houses in Westchester, Nantucket, and Florida became a battlefield as her marriage became increasingly acrimonious and how, emotionally estranged and financially dependent, she became trapped in her upper-class cage.

had four beautiful children and houses in Westchester, Nantucket, and Florida--but her marriage had become acrimonious. She had moved into the attic of her exclusive home in Westchester, a suburb of New York, while Phillip, her prosperous husband, remained downstairs. Torn between ambivalent emotions about her marriage and the inability to articulate her own longing for freedom, Wefali channeled her frustration into a whirlwind of domestic activity. Emotionally estranged, financially dependent, she was landlocked.

Parting the curtains on the intimate stage of contemporary marriage, Wefali delicately coaxes from beneath the surface of domestic life the poignancy, tragedy, loss, and humor that punctuate a long-term relationship. With lacerating wit and candor--about herself and the upperclass world around her--Wefali finds her way out of the attic and into the selfhood she always wanted. And along her journey, she has recorded a stunning personal odyssey both unique and universal.