I don’t think Alice Hoffman can write a bad book. This one grabbed me from the start and I finished it in a day. The story begins with Arlyn, who has just lost her father, her only family, and who decides that the next man she sees walking down the street will be the one she is fated to be with. After a few hours of waiting, she meets a student from Yale who has stopped to ask for directions. She is so convinced that he is her fate that she ignores the fact that they don’t really seem all that compatible, and by the time she realizes this, she has a son whom she adores and cannot figure out how she can leave the life she created.
So many lives are changed and created by the decision that Arlyn makes, and this story is about all of them. And, because it is an Alice Hoffman book, there are ghosts and elements of magic throughout which makes for a very compelling story.
