It's a rare wife who leaves a tranquil, conventionally happy marriage after 48 years ..".not with a bang but a whimper." Follow one such wife from her sunny origins reading Dotty Dolly's Tea Party, entranced by the Veiled Prophet Parade through her morph into Superwoman in the 50s Midwest USA. Observe her skating gingerly on life's calm surface until she glimpses mortality in the eyes of her cancer-stricken father and breaks through to the icy water beneath. Unlike Superman, this Superwife makes no phone-booth quick change. Instead, she loses her ability to leap over obstacles with a single bound and falls to earth---a long, slow descent to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, far from her comfy Indiana home and long-term marriage. There, the hollow echoes of her old life and her children's voices shred the remains of Supermother's cloak to uncover a heart mortal, flawed, tender---a heart that warms in a woman who blooms. Patricia Jean's passage may remind readers of breakthroughs in their own lives ---or of their dreams of what a different life might be like.