Seventh Heaven

In the late 1950s, when Nora Silk moves into Hemlock Street, the entire neighborhood sucks in its breath. A divorcée who wears Toreador pants and lets her kids eat sweets before school, Nora is a walking scandal. But when the block's husbands, wives, and children get to know her, they begin to see other things in Nora—and this Long Island town won't ever be the same...

Washington Post Book World

A consummate joy...magical.

In a prolific career that began with early writings in the American Review, Alice Hoffman has expanded and developed the idea of family and community -- the forces that bind it together and the forces that drive it apart -- with understated and elegant prose and powerful and complex characters.