Joyce Carol Oates shares her struggle to comprehend a life absent of the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century.

Traces the author's unconventional marriage to her Harvard-educated publishing editor husband, describing how their sophisticated world crumbled with the deterioration of his mental health before his death revealed unexpected secrets.

The author melds personal history with frank biological data about every stage of life, creating an "autobiography about my body" that seeks meaning in death, but moreover, life. Shields filters his frank--and usually foreboding--data through his own experience as a 51-year-old father with burgeoning back pain, contrasting his own gloomy tendencies with the defiant perspective of his own 97-year-old father, a man who has waged a lifelong, urgent battle...

Beth is a spirited woman with an intellectual disability who lives intensely and often joyfully, and spends most of her days riding the buses in Pennsylvania. The drivers, a lively group, are her mentors; her fellow passengers, her community-though some display less patience or kindness than others. Her sister, Rachel, a teacher and writer, camouflages her emotional isolation by leading a hyperbusy life. But one day, Beth asks Rachel to accompany...

"The beloved New York Times bestselling author shares a treasure trove of insight and guidance from her two grandmothers-time-tested common sense advice on the most important aspects of a woman's life, from childhood to old age"--