Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality.

Judy never intended to start wearing the dog. But when she stumbled across her son Teddy's old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So: the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she's repeated the process every day since. Life hasn't gone according to Judy's plan. Her career as a children's book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy,...

Middle-aged Magdalena has lost contact with her son after he took off with a friend from their town of Guanajuato to cross the border into the U.S., hopeful to find work. Desperate to find out what happened to him, and to know whether or not he's even alive, she embarks on an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous journey to discover the truth. At the same time, a young man named Miguel has returned to Mexico after being deported from the U.S.,...

"Helen Decatur spent a lifetime setting goals-- getting through college and law school, opening her own practice, becoming financially secure, and establishing herself as one of the most highly respected divorce attorneys in the state of South Carolina. Achieving those goals was a breeze compared to the one she's faced with now. The most driven--and cynical--of the Sweet Magnolias, Helen is forty-two, single and suddenly ready for the family she's...

Midwife Martha Cade has decided. When he returns in February, she is going to marry Mayor Thomas Dillon. That is the only decision in life in which she feels confident these days. Everything else around her feels like it's changing too fast, from her daughter's obvious affection for the town's young doctor to Martha realizing she's ready to pass on her role as midwife to someone younger.

"In the Midst of Winter begins with a minor traffic accident--which becomes the catalyst for an unexpected and moving love story between two people who thought they were deep into the winter of their lives. Richard Bowmaster--a 60-year-old human rights scholar--hits the car of Evelyn Ortega--a young, undocumented immigrant from Guatemala--in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn. What at first seems just a small inconvenience takes an unforeseen and...

"A dynamic and inspiring exploration of the new science that is redrawing the future for people in their forties, fifties, and sixties for the better--and for good. Drawing from emerging information in neurology, psychology, biology, genetics, and sociology--as well as her own story of midlife transformation--Hagerty redraws the map for people in midlife and plots a new course forward in understanding our health, our relationships, even our futures."--...