Tara Road - Tapa dura

Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children.  She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend.  By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband.  The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed.

Drawn into lifestyles vastly differing from their own, at first each resents the news of how well the other is getting on.  Ria seems to have become quite a hostess, entertaining half the neighborhood, which at first irritates the reserved and withdrawn Marilyn, a woman who has always guarded her privacy.  Marilyn seems to have become bosom friends with Ria's children, as well as with Colm, a handsome restaurateur, whom Ria has begun to miss terribly.  At the end of the summer, the women at last meet face-to-face.  Having learned a great deal, about themselves and about each other, they find that they have become, firmly and forever, good friends.

A moving story rendered with the deft touch of a master artisan, Tara Road is Maeve Binchy at her very best--utterly beautiful, hauntingly unforgettable, entirely original, and wholly enjoyable.

Maeve Binchy was born in a small village outside Dublin. She spent her childhood in Dalkey, an experience she draws on today when creating the rural villages usually at the heart of her novels. After receiving her B.A. from University College in Dublin, she began working as a teacher. The experiences she had while teaching at a Jewish school and on vacation in Israel compelled her to find work on a kibbutz. While abroad in Israel, she wrote weekly letters to her father describing life in a country constantly on the brink of war. When Binchy's father sent one of her letters to The Irish Times where it was published and earned her £18, Binchy, who had been making £16 working at the school, thought that she had truly "arrived."

Since these humble beginnings, Binchy's success has been asto