Breathing Lessons

Summary

A comic and quietly tender novel that unfolds over a single day, as Maggie and Ira Moran drive from Baltimore to a friend's funeral in Pennsylvania and detour into the messy lives of their grown son and former daughter-in-law. Tyler uses the road trip as a frame for examining a long, imperfect marriage and the small daily compromises that hold ordinary lives together. The book is a representative example of her affectionate, finely observed Baltimore fiction.