Husband — Sol Stein

Peter Carmody is a man most people would envy. He has a successful career, an attractive wife, two children he loves and who love him. Yet Peter Carmody has been playing at a marriage that has run down over the years through emotional attrition and boredom. Sometimes, when the martinis come fast enough and the determined, frenetic gaiety of friends momentarily fills up the emptiness, the charade is almost convincing. But in the small, honest hours of the night, Peter recognizes his arrangement for what it is--the very opposite of living. In an explosive self confrontation, Peter gambles all he has against what he hopes to have in a life with Elizabeth, the woman he loves. Resented by his friends who lack the courage--perhaps the desperation--to break out of their own loveless arrangements, and humiliated by the American way of divorce that strips him of his children, property, and self respect, Peter touches despair before realizing that making an honest, joyful connection with Elizabeth is an affirmation of life worth any cost. The Husband is a very real and dramatic story of a man struggling to find the truth of his life. The Husband is someone you know.