Home Repair

Rosenberg, a poet and children’s book author, makes a clean break into adult fiction with the story of a middle-aged woman whose journey to independence begins at a garage sale. Forty-six-year-old Eve’s garage sale takes an unexpected turn when her husband, Chuck, goes on an errand and never comes back, leaving Eve to raise teenage son Marcus and nine-year-old daughter Noni. Drawing support from her sometimes helpful mother, old friends at the university where she works and new friends—such as the man she meets in the park and a Korean graduate student and his non–English-speaking wife—Eve discovers the locals offer all she needs in her life. Rosenberg achieves remarkable emotional range—comic to tragic, dysfunction to triumph, irony to wisdom—for an engaging, often touching story of survival on a heartbreak diet. (May)