Book excerpt: As her stultifying marriage is unravelling, and in the midst of mourning the loss of her creative self, Caro Tanner has a nightmare about Peter, an old love whom she hasn’t seen in twenty years. She takes this as a sign he still needs her. With her three children safely off to summer camp, Caro embarks on a pre-Facebook, pre-cell phone road trip to recapture who she once was and what she thinks she once had. Set in the rock ‘n roll ‘60s of Tucson, Arizona—when Caro and Peter were kooky, colorful, and inseparable drama students—and in the suburban ‘80s, when Caro’s creative spark has been quenched to serve the needs of her husband and children, So Happy Together explores the conundrum of love and physical attraction, creativity and family responsibilities, and what happens when they are out of sync. It is a story of missed opportunities, the alluring possibility of second chances, and what we leave behind, carry forward, and settle for when we choose. It sits in that complicated, confounding, beautiful place where love resides.