When she first decided to take a year away from her husband, family, and friends, Joan Anderson's change of course was a courageous effort. Setting out against the tide of expectations, she learned from her inward retreat that a whole world was available to her beyond the duties of wife and mother that she had performed for years.

In welcoming her husband, Robin, into her newly made sanctuary, she surprised her friends yet again. More importantly, she faced a new challenge in accepting the risk of balancing her needs with her husband's, of disrupting her carefully renewed sense of self. After all, recognizing that the patterns of her life were not indelibly set had been one of the key lessons of her year by the sea. What would it mean to live with someone who, after thirty years of marriage, had come to expect her to behave in a certain way? And would she have the strength to allow him to come to terms with his own unfinished self?

Through the twelve months of An Unfinished Marriage, Joan tested the waters of her family and her old friendships as well as her marriage and discovered that many of her relationships were still open to growth and change. As she looked at the people around her with new eyes, she saw something unexpected in them — a new image of her life as it was and how it could be.