Olive Kitteridge

Crosby, Maine, may seem like nowhere, but seen through Elizabeth Strout's eyes, it's the whole world. And the lives that are lived there are filled with all of the grand human drama -- desire, despair, jealousy, hope, and love.

Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town and in the world at large, but she doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance . . . a former student who has lost the will to live . . . Olive's own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities . . . and Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.