A Circle Around Her

When Mary Lanaghan's husband left her in 1985, she took her four children to the country - or so it seemed then - and found a house by a lake in the woods. She was unable to afford as much land about her as she would have liked, but for some years she and her two girls and two boys lived with the sounds of birds and at night only starlight. It was a refuge from the suburb where her neighbors had watched her marriage come apart. Now, as Mary Lanaghan approaches fifty years of age, her children have grown and moved away, and she must create a new life for herself. She finds solace in the beauty of the earth around her - the sky shifting with each season, the lake reflecting the movement and color above it, the woods that envelop her during long walks with her dog. But her new friend, Ron Starks, a gay man who, with his lover, owns the local diner, is nudging Mary into the world of dating, a messy world in which her own children are floundering about. A Circle Around Her is Jonathon Strong's humorous and touching new novel about the fateful season that brings Mary together with an extended family of children, friends, and lovers, while she rediscovers a spirit of independence and begins to cultivate a strength within.