Unhappily separated from her husband at the start of this warmhearted but uneven novel by Samuel (A Piece of Heaven
, etc.), 46-year-old Trudy tries to put her life back together with the help of her friends on Kitchen Avenue in Pueblo, Colo. Trudy wants to forget Rick, who cheated on her for months before she found a series of incriminating e-mails, but she still loves him desperately and can't give up hope that they might get back together. With plenty of free time on her hands—her three children are mostly grown and her job as a university secretary is undemanding—she finds herself wondering whether it's too late to travel to Spain and study poetry, things she planned to do before she married Rick and got pregnant. Meanwhile, Roberta, the elderly black woman next door, is mourning the loss of her husband, Edgar; Jade, Roberta's gorgeous social worker granddaughter, is trying to forget her jailbird ex-husband by training to be a boxer; and 24-year-old Shannelle, a mother of two, is struggling to be a writer despite the opposition of her blue-collar husband. All four women look out for one another, exchanging gossip, massages, lemon cake and advice. The arrival of a new neighbor, sultry Spanish photographer Angel, gives Trudy fresh confidence and encourages her to take control of her fate. The abrupt cuts from one woman's story to the next make for choppy reading, and Samuel relies rather heavily on New Age homilies, but her characters are warmly drawn and sympathetic, their problems real and believable. (Feb.)
