Patricia Gaffney Mad Dash

Mad Dash

Patricia Gaffney

Shaye Areheart (Crown), Aug 2007, $23.00

ISBN: 9780307382115

Two decades together prove opposites attract and stay attracted. Impetuous photographer Dash Bateman thinks her spouse Mason-Dixon History professor Andrew is a prude; prim and proper Andrew believes his wife is reckless. Yet they remain together raising a child in love.

However, when Dash's mom dies at the same time their daughter leaves for college, she questions her life as she believes Andrew does not understand her anymore; assuming he once did. She insists it is not grief or an empty nest or the dog; it is much greater as she wonders is that all there is. She leaves Andrew at their house and stays at their isolated cabin to think about living separate lives. Andrew sort of moves on flirting with a professor and coveting the department chair; Dash sort of moves back flirting with replacement mother, daughter and lover.

Rotating perspectives between the lead married couple allows the audience to see how two people interpret differently the same incident (the real theory of relativity). Readers will want to know whether the Batemans overcome their frustrations with one another and their overall respective disappointments in life. Although the ending is over the rainbow, Patricia Gaffney provides a wonderful look at middle age relationships when the sandwich generation obtains freedom (through death and college) for the first time in almost twenty years.

Harriet Klausner