Matters of Chance: A Novel

Matters of Chance is a glorious, captivating novel about Morgan and Maude Shurtliff, who fall in love and marry in the years before World War II. Unable to have children of their own, Morgan and Maude adopt twin girls. The four go home to their beautiful house in the country outside of New York City and begin to settle into what they hope will be a long and happy life. When the twins are still young, Morgan is called to serve in World War II, leaving Maude to raise her daughters alone. Jeannette Haien has rendered Morgan's war experiences with astonishing detail, just as she has captured the American post-war era with a precision that is unrivaled in recent fiction.

In chronicling the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and disappointments of Maude and Morgan's marriage, Jeannette Haien has written a love story to savor. Suspenseful, romantic in the truest sense, heartbreaking and always engrossing, Matters of Chance brings to mind the best of Edith Wharton in the broadness of its scope, in its unforgettable descriptions of an age and in the vividness of its characters.