Unlike most divorced parents, whose interactions are confined to the topic of the kids, people still sharing a house have to talk about clogged sinks and moth infestations.

In 2002, my husband died very suddenly. My main concern that day was how to deliver the news to our daughter, then eight. Someone put me in touch with Judith Wallerstein, an expert in child psychology who coached me through what to say.

Like the protagonist of her 2006 novel, 'Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,' Ayelet Waldman is a Jewish redhead who attended Harvard Law School and is madly in love with her husband. But the obvious similarities end there.

Dr. Esserman, who directs the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, is one of only a few surgeons in the United States willing to put women with D.C.I.S. on active surveillance instead of performing biopsies, lumpectomies or mastectomies.