Showing Bygones by LaVyrle Spencer

Spencer takes a compassionate look at a contemporary family undergoing painful transitions. Bess Curran, 40, is an interior designer in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, still lonely and bitter after her traumatic divorce six years earlier. Her adult daughter, Lisa, anxious for her parents to reconcile, arranges a surprise dinner meeting where she informs them that she is pregnant and about to marry. Bess and former husband Michael (he left her for another woman, who, in turn, has just left him) can barely control their mutual animosity yet must come to grips with the startling news. To exacerbate matters, their 19-year-old son, Randy, is intractably hostile toward his father and seems headed for a future of drugs and unsavory companions. Bess and Michael are attracted to each other but wary--they're suffering and groping for help.