Two hours from New York, there is an old house on the edge of the gray sea. In the summer of 1958, Eddie, a handsome sixteen-year-old boy, discovers love there in the arms of the most beautiful woman in the world, who is also the saddest, while around them hover countless photos, graceful ghosts of his lost sons. Ruth, his little girl, wakes up in the middle of the night, and Ted, her husband, a cunning squash player and seaside Don Juan, writes children's stories, stories that scare... But the summer ends with the first flight of wild geese, and the blonde Marion takes her red Mercedes to abandon the husband she no longer loves, the young lover she dares not love, and the little girl to whom she is too afraid to become attached.

After this nostalgic dawn, we find Ruth in 1990, a famous novelist and formidable squash player, but an anxious single woman, dreading marriage and motherhood. During a promotional tour in Amsterdam, a trip to the red-light district and an encounter with a pretty redheaded prostitute confront her with an adventure straight out of her childhood terrors.

A Paper Widow has the burlesque and sometimes naughty verve of John Irving's best novels; it is also a nocturnal book, about the dark side of being, mourning and melancholy; but above all it is a marvelous tale, where, if sorrow has a long life, love is found and rediscovered.