Belva Plain

Though Iris Stern considers herself a modern woman, with a successful academic career and a happy marriage, she still holds steadfast to her old-fashioned sensibilities. But as the mother of three adult children, each with their own lives and burdens to bear, she often finds those sensibilities called into question when confronted with the choices her children have made.

The owner of a New England glassworks company, widow Cassie Wright struggles to raise her surviving child, Gwen, in the face of unbearable tragedy, but as Gwen blossoms into an independent young woman, dissention drives the two apart, until Gwen has her own child, a little girl who reunites the estranged family.