Mourning Glory - Hardcover

Warren Adler

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157566898X ISBN 13: 9781575668987

Publisher: Kensington Books, 2001

Synopsis

Thirty-eight year old divorcee Grace Sorentino is in a precarious position, upwardly mobile in age, downwardly mobile in income. A cosmetician on Palm Beach's fashionable Worth Avenue, she barely makes enough to support her 16-year old daughter Jackie in their tiny apartment. Still they're scraping by . . . until Grace loses her job. Hanging on by a thread, Grace reluctantly pursues a cynical and bizarre scheme to snare a rich widower. But when she finally comes within a hair's breadth of her goal, she finds herself enmeshed in a self-spun web of deception and danger that threatens to rob her of everything she holds dear. Brilliant and bittersweet, daring, erotic and darkly humorous, Mourning Glory entices readers into one woman's tangled web. A timely novel about the cost of getting what you want -- when what you really want is priceless.

About this title

From the Author

What Inspired My Novel Mourning Glory

When you reach a certain age, you gradually find yourself among numerous newly widowed friends. Many of them bond together and build their lives around each other's similar interests and commonality. Some, not all, are looking for companionship that is not necessarily marriage, but rather a friend from another sex that would be an acceptable companion in the couples' world still prevalent around them.

My wife and I had many friends in this category and some asked us to, as they would say, "fix them up." It is a hard matchup, since many widowers of an uncertain age seem to prefer younger companions and in some cases, significantly younger. Often, as we went our merry way in the social scene, we would see older men with younger women in restaurants and at social gatherings. In many cases these December-May relationships turn into marriages, some happy, some not, but most protected by pre-nuptial agreements.

It is no secret that youths are attracted to more financially secure prospects who tend to be older, just as the latter is attracted to the youths for a variety of reasons--one of them having to do with returning to their youthful fantasies. Thus, the compromises for both the younger and the older person offers unlimited possibilities for pleasant and fulfilling marriages.

As an observant writer, whose antenna is always open to the eureka moment that will explode into a great book idea, the social set referred to above offers a cornucopia of possibilities. On a visit to Palm Beach several years ago, my wife and I were participating in idle chatter at some social occasion when we overheard one woman giving advice to a friend who was complaining about the difficulties of finding a possible mate.

Half jokingly, the woman said that Palm Beach was awash in rich widowers who were burying their older wives after long marriages.

"Why don't you check the funeral listings to see who could be currently available?" the woman advised.

"That is ridiculous," the other woman replied.

"Why ridiculous?" the woman who had suggested, countered. "If I were you I'd attend all the funerals and size the men up, then join the funeral party if you discover a hot prospect."

"And then?" the other woman asked now curious and engaged by the idea.

"It's like a preview. If you like what you see, go after it. At this stage these guys are vulnerable and lonely."

There it was, that illusive eureka moment, the what if idea that is the raw material for a novel. Not quite a dark comedy, Mourning Glory, is a story of a woman's search for financial security that begins in cynicism and desperate manipulation, but ending in surprise.

I had great fun writing this book and readers tell me they found inspiration and enjoyment in the story and the characters.

About the Author

Warren Adler is best known for The War of the Roses, his masterpiece fictionalization of a macabre divorce turned into the Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated dark comedy hit starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. In addition to the success of the stage adaptation of his iconic novel on the perils of divorce, Adler has optioned and sold film rights to more than a dozen of his novels and short stories to Hollywood and major television networks. Random Hears (starring Harrison Ford and Kirsten Scott Thomas), The Sunset Gang (starring Jerry Stiller, Uta Hagen, Harold Gould, and Doris Roberts), Private Lies, Funny Boys, Madeline's Miracles, Trans-Siberian Express, and his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series are only a few titles that have forever left Adler's mark on contemporary American authorship from page to stage to screen.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kensington Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 157566898X
• ISBN 13: 9781575668987
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 346