These collected short stories from Hilma Wolitzer --- most of them originally published in magazines including Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post, in the 1960s and 1970s, along with a new story that brings her early characters into the present --- are evocative of an era that still resonates deeply today. In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of her life. And in several linked stories throughout, the relationship between the narrator and her husband unfolds in telling and often hilarious vignettes. Of their time and yet timeless, Wolitzer's stories zero in on the domestic sphere with wit, candor, grace and an acutely observant eye.

When Edward Schuyler, a modest 62-year-old science teacher, is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. Edward is still in mourning, but when his stepchildren place a personal ad in the newspaper for him, he is torn between his loyalty to Bee’s memory and his growing longing for connection.