“A page-turner in the best sense . . . One cares for Ms. Tyler’s touchingly flawed characters. . . . [She] knows as well as anyone that ‘human beings lead many lives.’ Casually, delightfully, Ladder of Years will tell you just how we humans manage this trick.” — Baltimore Sun BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION, declares the headline. Forty-year-old Delia Grinstead was last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To her husband and three almost-grown children, she has vanished without trace or reason. But for Delia, who has long felt like a tiny gnat buzzing around her family’s edges, “walking away from it all” was not a premeditated act but an impulse that will lead her into a new, exciting, and previously unimagined life.
