The Breakdown Lane - Paperback

by Jacquelyn Mitchard (Author)

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Twelve Times Blessed comes a novel of the breakdown of a family and of healing after a loss

Giving advice is what Julianne Ambrose Gillis does for a living--every Sunday she doles it out to clueless people she doesn't know, in a column in her local Wisconsin paper. But when it comes to her personal life, Julie seems to have no insight whatsoever. She has worked hard to keep her marriage fresh and to be a good mother, so it's a mystery when Leo, her husband of twenty years, decides to defect from their life together and their three children: Gabe, Caroline and Aury.

In his absence, Julie is diagnosed with a serious illness, which drives her children to undertake a dangerous journey to find Leo--before it's too late. But what they discover about their father is even more devastating than their mother's deteriorating health.

As the known world sinks precariously from view and leaves them all adrift, the Gillis clan must navigate their way through the trenches of love, guilt and betrayal, back to solid ground and a new definition of family.

Back Jacket

An advice columnist for a local newspaper, Julieanne Gillis dispenses wisdom to her readers, but somehow missed the signs that something was amiss in her own home. Devoted to being a good mother and keeping her twenty-year marriage fresh and exciting, she is shocked by her husband's surprise announcement that he needs a "sabbatical" from their life together--and devastated when he disappears, leaving Julie with no funds to raise two teenagers and a small daughter alone. But it is the discovery that Julieanne suffers from a serious illness that truly crumbles her family's foundation--setting her children on a dangerous, quixotic journey to locate their missing father before it's too late.