Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler

One day, during her family's beach vacation, Delia gets up and walks away from it all. She starts a new life in another town, figuring out who she is and reclaiming herself.

Some would not sympathize with a woman who abandons her three teenage children and her husband. Somehow, Tyler makes it so I could understand why Delia does this. It's for herself. Still controversial though.

I was absorbed by this book, the writing and description of ordinary days and events and the stirrings of the heart. This book seemed especially relevant to what I've been thinking about and studying in my Psychology of Aging class about the Middle Passage (or Crisis) when one is "radically stunned into consciousness" (from James Hollis' The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, 1993) and we evaluate what we've been doing with our lives.