Diana Lively is a talented British architect who builds dollhouses so she can tend to her three children and overbearing husband.  Stranded in an unhappy marriage by what she perceives as her children’s best interests, Diana must find a way to reclaim her power while holding fast to duty, honor and housewifely sanity.  When an Arizona tycoon enters Oxford’s gated halls with the offer of a year in America, Diana’s world is turned upside down and inside out, with surprising effects. This comic, intelligent and entertaining novel spotlights the ways in which nurturing can come from the most unlikely sources and achieve the most unexpected outcomes.  Ultimately, this novel retrieves motherhood from the dust bin of roles taken-for-granted and catapults it into a sphere of influence all its own.  At the same time, the plot consistently counters stereotypical notions of maternal devotion.  After reading this book, which links mother-love to respect for Nature, the Earth-embedded bumper stickers proclaiming Love Your Mother will suddenly seem both perfectly reasonable and patently obvious.