A Mother and Two Daughters — Gail Godwin

The husband Nell loved for forty years is gone, leaving her to face the tired rituals of genteel Southern widowhood...and the endless, destructive rivalry between her grown children.

Relentlessly truthful Cate, who sacrifices people to ideals, is suddenly afraid she'll have nothing to show for her life of defiant independence. Conventionally correct Lydia, who performs to perfection the part of wife and mother, has now decided she needs a larger audience.

As the ties of family threaten to break under the strain, as unresolved feelings swell to a violent confrontation, a mother and her daughters at last reach out and care for one another, and themselves.