But life is about to deliver a series of challenges that overturn Leroy's hard-won serenity and threaten to destroy his marriage and his family. Leroy's father, Earl, once so wise and invincible, is descending into the empty, helpless depths of senility, while his ill-tempered mother struggles with her own health problems. The marriage of a high school friend ends tragically. And Leroy wrestles with his own bitter secret--his fierce resentment of his beloved wife's troubled past and of the other men who knew her before he married her.