Circle of Three: A Novel

“Gaffney’s characters are appealing and realistic…Readers will race through this book.”
—New Orleans Times Picayune

“Poignant….Entertaining….As good as it gets.”
—New York Post

No other author writes about the lives and friendships of women with more warmth and grace than New York Times bestseller Patricia Gaffney.  A true master of women’s fiction, with Circle of Three she flourishes the same breathtaking characterization and storytelling skills that made her previous novel, The Saving Graces, a readers’ favorite. The story of a woman grieving for her losses and her life, and her relationship with her overbearing mother and precocious young daughter, Circle of Three focuses on three generations of a troubled family, the anger and misunderstanding that separates them…and the love that holds them together. Gaffney does beautifully what Elizabeth Berg, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Anne Tyler also do so well: exploring the tricky bonds of family in novels both heart-soaring and heartbreaking.

Can grief last for a person's whole life? That is the question that haunts Carrie as she mourns the sudden death of her husband, and the much earlier death of their love. Carrie's overbearing mother, Dana, also silently mourns a painful loss: the disintegration of her relationship with her daughter. At the end point of their two generations, Ruth—Carrie's precocious child on the brink of womanhood—struggles with the loss of her father and the emotional abandonment of her mother. Still, she is eager to discover who she is and what life holds, even if that knowledge draws her away from the people she loves.

Through the stories of three unforgettable women, New York Times bestseller Patricia Gaffney explores the despair and hope, misunderstanding and compassion, anger and love that can divide a family . . . yet ultimately binds it together.