Back When We Were Grownups

An irresistible new novel from Anne Tyler.

At 53, Rebecca Davitch mistress of the Open Arms, a crumbling 19th-century row house in Baltimore where giving parties is the family business suddenly asks herself whether she has turned into the wrong person. Is she really this natural-born celebrator, joyous and outgiving?

Certainly that's how Joe Davitch she her 30-some years ago. And that's why this large-spirited older man, a divorcee with three little girls, swept her into his orbit. Before she knew it, she was embracing his extended family (plus a child of their own) and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms where people paid to celebrate their family occasions in style. But can Beck (as she is known to the Davitch clan) really recover the person she left behind? A question that touches us all and one that Anne Tyler explores with characteristic humor and wisdom in a novel one wishes would never end.