Back When We Were Grownups (Tyler)

Back When We Were Grownups 
Anne Tyler, 2001
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345477248

Summary
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 out-giving?

Certainly that's how Joe Davitch saw her 30-some years ago. And that's why this large-spirited older man, a divorce 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 has 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. (From the publisher.)