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Picture a '90s version of the Cleavers: a Hallmark-happy midwestern family, the Cranes, complete with the doting wife and mother, Margaret; the devoted father, Adam, equally committed to work and family; and three well-behaved, obedient children (all lovely, of course). But when this picture-perfect portrait is shattered by a father's longstanding affair, it is the heartbroken wife and the shocked children who are left to reassemble the scattered pieces of their life.
A side plot involves Nina, long a friend of the family, who shares a sisterly relationship with Margaret, whose mother raised Nina as a small child. Nina moves to New York, where she becomes a successful interior designer and finds herself falling in love with a charming, older man-a man who she later discovers is married.
Through these two stories, Plain explores all sides of the affair, and from each participant's view: the wife, the cheating husband, and the led-along girlfriend. The conclusion? All are caught in the pain of its wake. None is left unaffected.
Anyone who has witnessed the pain and heartache of divorce can empathize with Margaret and the children. Plain's keen observations, descriptions of the family's new financial struggles and normally placid dinner times, now tension-filled battles, ring true.
Karly Randolph is a writer in Nashville.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.