The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love

Molly Hanner's marriage to William is slowly unraveling, and the pulls of entropy this exerts upon them and their three children painfully instruct Molly in the many ways people barely miss loving each other. But divorce is only a catalyst in Molly's life. Amazed at the weight of her family's hurt and at her isolation within it, Molly, painter and student of astronomy, shifts her gaze outward - to the stars, to the images she paints, to the world around her - looking for an order that will contain the disarray of her own life.
As the novel widens to include the lives of others, so too does Molly's perspective. From "disorder and early sorrow," she learns an inclusive way of extending herself and her immediate family that has little to do with an exclusive idea of order, but that allows her to focus once more on the people around her own table one Halloween night, and fully join them in a love without order but with much meaning.