ACT II

Beverly knows she's lucky-born beautiful, meeting the love of her life at fifteen, marrying him at eighteen, and now celebrating thirty-six years of marital bliss. But then George dies suddenly, and the ground beneath her drops. With every vestige of joy now engulfed in grief, she must somehow navigate the world as a single woman for the first time in her life.

A memoir that reads like a novel, "Act II: The Unpredictable Adventures of a Widow" is a stirring account of widowhood that follows Beverly as she faces the alarming realization that she has scant financial resources; attempts to live happily in a couple-oriented society; survives a harrowing, life-threatening experience; and braves the strange new world of modern dating and sex.

A candid combination of triumphs and mishaps, her story portrays, with compelling insight, that life is full of surprises, for better and worse, and that love can outlast grief.