The Trouble With Being Good

Marianne Bell has spent a lifetime being good.A good wife. A good mother. A good friend. The woman who remembers birthdays, solves problems before anyone notices them, and makes life easier for everyone she loves.Then, at her husband's retirement dinner, Thomas announces their next chapter: a new job, a new house, and a new life in Arizona.Everyone applauds.Marianne realizes no one asked her.The next morning, she discovers something else: sixty-eight thousand dollars quietly accumulated in an account of her own-and, for the first time in decades, no one needs that money for anything.Then she finds the house.Condemned, leaking, wildly impractical, and absolutely not part of the plan, the old Victorian in Bellwether needs nearly everything.Marianne buys it anyway.What begins as one inexplicable decision becomes something larger as the house fills with women caught between the lives they had and whatever comes next. But creating a place where other women can begin again forces Marianne to confront an uncomfortable truth: she knows exactly how to take care of everyone except herself.Warm, funny, and quietly defiant, The Trouble With Being Good is a contemporary novel about marriage, motherhood, friendship, second acts, and what happens when a woman who has spent her life doing what is expected finally asks the most inconvenient question of all: What do I want?