Maggie is harum-scarum, impetuous, soft;

Ira is competent, patient, infallible. They

have been married for kventy-eight years.

On a hot summer day they arc driving to

Deer Lick, Pennsylvania, ninety miles from

their home in Baltimore,to the funeral of

Maggie s best friend s husband. And during

the course of that journey, with its several

unexpected detours--into the lives of old

friends and grown children, into memories

of the past and attempts to rearrange the

prcsent--Anne Tyler shows us all there is to

know about a marriage: the expectations,

the disappointments; the way children can

create storms in a family; tire way that wife

and husband can fall in love all over again;

the way that evcrything--and nothing--

changes.