You are the love of my life, by Susan Richards Shreve

Lucy, a single mother of 12-year-old Maggie and 5-year-old Felix, is living more or less happily in New York.  She has had a long-term, somewhat hopeless relationship with the children’s father, who they all call “Uncle Reuben.”  She is a noted children’s book author, and the older, married Reuben is her editor, who she met in her early twenties.  She found her own father, a suicide by hanging, when she was quite young and it has made her a very private person.  Her mother, who was French, is also long dead by 1973, when the action of the book takes place.  Lucy decides to leave Reuben and her New York life for the charming Washington DC neighborhood where she still owns the house her father died in.  It is the time of Watergate.   The women of the neighborhood form a tight-knit group around one central queen bee figure, but not just Lucy has secrets to protect as it turns out.  OK for a vacation read but not great …  304 pp.