Count the Ways

Joyce Maynard, a New York Times bestselling author, combines themes from her most acclaimed works in her most ambitious work to date. The novel tells the captivating story of a family, from the happy beginnings of a young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the expensive fallout that affects every member of the family.

Early in the 1970s, Eleanor and Cam cross paths at a Vermont crafts fair. He creates wooden bowls, she writes and is an artist. In less than four years, they become parents to three children: a red-headed boy who plays the violin, talks to God, and stuffs rocks into his pockets. Eleanor's childhood dream come true on their New Hampshire farm: snow days spent by the fire, summer evenings spent watching Cam play softball, and the yearly ritual of crafting paper boats and cork people to toss into the creek come springtime. Even if Eleanor and Cam don't spend as much time together as they once did, they still have something more important. their household.

Then, as a result of Cam's carelessness, a horrible disaster occurs. Unable to let go of him, Cam finds comfort in a new, younger lover, while Eleanor is overcome with resentment and loses herself in her role as a mother.

The five members of this broken family make unexpected decisions and discoveries throughout the ensuing decades that sometimes unite them and other times drive them apart. Through the course of their lives, as seen by one child's gender transformation and another's decision to discontinue all contact with her mother, Joyce Maynard depicts a family that is forced to face difficult but necessary realities about its past and find solace during its darkest moments.

Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, heartbreaking, and truly compassionate tale about home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness. It is a narrative about clinging on and learning to let go.