My wife and I listened to this on a trip to Texas and while it held our interest was just not as good as some others out there. Fran Benedetto is a battered wife. She’s an RN whose abusive husband is a cop, and she has seen to what little effect orders of protection have. In fact, three women she had seen in the emergency room after being battered by their husbands of boyfriends were later killed by them despite the supposed legal remedy. So when Bobby, her husband, really smashes her about the face, she enlists the support of Patty Bancroft, the organizer and founder of an agency that relocates women and creates new identities for them so they can escape from their abusive partners.
Her torment lies in the fact that she still loves her husband and his passion. He had a brooding and magnetic personality and loved their son Robert, but his drinking and rages had become more and more violent. She escapes with Robert, a child of about twelve and settles in with a new identity in Florida. She constantly worries that her husband will seek her out and kill her. She knows he has the resources and connections to find her if he wants to. Despite her new name, new job, and new location, everything she does is tempered by the realization that Bobby could show up at any time to take away Robert and beat her again.
Quindlan renders the horrors of spousal abuse so realistically one has to wonder if she herself had perhaps been a battered spouse. There is a strong tension throughout the novel for the reader who wonders just when everything will fall apart and why. It remains a tragedy that society has yet to find a better way to deal with the terrible plight of women who find themselves in such a tragic situation.
