The Lake Shore Limited

That's what the play was about, she was thinking abruptly. The wish to imagine what life could be, how it could change, if you were unencumbered. Did everyone who was married do this from time to time, imagine an unencumbered life? Three years after the death of her younger brother Gus, Leslie still thinks about what might have been: if Gus hadn't got on that plane on September 11th, if her husband understood the nature of her grief, if she had made different choices.

As she sits down to watch The Lake Shore Limited, a disquietingly autobiographical play written by Gus' former girlfriend Billy, she can't help but wonder whether she also holds on to the past, and whether she really knows Billy at all. Meanwhile, Sam, Leslie's divorced friend, finds in the play inescapable echoes of his troubled life and begins to fall for Billy's distinctive, enigmatic beauty. A powerful love story; a mesmerising tale of entanglements, connections and inconsolable losses; a marvellous reflection on the meaning of grace and the uses of sorrow, in life and in art: "The Lake Shore Limited" is Sue Miller at her dazzling best.