"It's Eleanor who starts the Friday night get-togethers. From her window she sees two young women with small children, separate, struggling, and plainly lonely--and decides to ask them in. Gradually a group of six different and disparate women forms. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a cane. They include one wife, three mothers, and five working women. All of them, in their own way, need and value the tradition of Friday nights spent together with a bottle of wine and children underfoot. And then one of them meets a man--an enigmatic, significant man--and the dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested--and some of them break."--Book jacket.