Book summary

An old couple decides to winter in the rural New Hampshire town of Willard where they spend their summers. The wife's friendship with the daughter of a neighbor leads to a greater understanding of herself and her long marriage.

Media reviews

"The work of an accomplished and prolific poet and novelist, it is yet flawed in style and flabby in content. A family novel thick with characters, it yet does not bring the reader in to share the depth of those characters' experiences. It reads like a book intended for a private printing, in the sense that Miss Sarton assumes by her style that we already know, somehow, the people and events she portrays. And that assumption--not, presumably, deliberate--makes shallow what might have been profound."