Maynard, Joyce

Joyce Maynard is the author of nine previous novels and five books of nonfiction, as well as the syndicated column “Domestic Affairs.” Her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, has been translated into 16 languages. Her novels To Die For and Labor Day were both adapted for film. Count the Ways: A Novel (William Morrow Paperbacks) follows the arc of the lives of Eleanor and Cam, from their meeting at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s, to having three children and a family life of softball games in the summer, snow days by the fire, and small traditions like launching paper boats in the brook every spring. Then comes a terrible accident caused by Cam’s negligence. Eleanor can’t forgive him and, consumed by bitterness, loses herself in her life as a mother while Cam finds solace with a new young partner. Over the decades that follow, this fractured family makes surprising discoveries and decisions that bring them together and often tear them apart. Count the Ways captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past and find redemption in its darkest hours.