Manless in Montclair: Love, Loss, Excessive Dating

Being short with big boobs means living life off-balance. Isabel knows this all too well; at five-feet-nothing with a tendency to tip over in heels, she’s struggled for twenty-five years to make clothes, careers, and boyfriends fit. Enter Michael. Divorced father, recovering alcoholic, and fifteen years her senior—he was the last guy she thought would make the cut. But when he proposed over a pastrami sandwich in a New York City deli on the anniversary of their first date, Isabel knew, improbably, that he was the one.Fifteen mostly happy years and two kids later, Isabel walks into her living room to discover her husband dead on the floor, leaving her a widow at forty-one. At Michael’s funeral, a guest solemnly informs her that the official mourning period for a Jewish widow is thirty days. At that moment, Isabel can’t imagine a time when she will stop grieving. Not helping the process is this: as a single mom living in the very married suburbs, for the first time in fifteen years Isabel once again just doesn’t fit in. It takes her younger daughter’s request for a new daddy to set Isabel on a journey through online dating, shifty matchmakers, and painfully orchestrated singles dinners. But after endless dates and a story on page three of the Daily News, Isabel begins to realize that another man may not be the answer and, surprisingly, that’s when things begin to change for the better. . . .