Here on Earth - Alice Hoffman

March (Marcheline) Murray, and her daughter Gwen, arrive in the small Massachusetts town March grew up in for the funeral of a woman who cared for her and her father after the death of her mother.  For Gwen it is the first visit; and for March it's the first time that she's come home in nineteen years.  She married a local boy and they made their home in California.  And now March discovers that the boy she lost, the love of her life in her teens until he left town and didn't come back is home, and owning most of it.  This lost love seems stronger than her marriage, stronger than her bond with her daughter, stronger than the strings of old friendships because he wants her back and somehow it seems that he can get her.
This is the kind of love story you don't want to experience.  The dark side of a man who only wanted March, and will do anything at all to keep her this time round.  The dark side of a violent character.  How many times have you seen a woman with bruises and thought "how did that happen"?  This is the first of Alice Hoffman's books I have read, and boy, is she a wordsmith.  This one is worth reading for the pictures in those words which conjure up feelings and colours and temperatures and  everything needed to weave a heartbreaking story about the wrong kind of love, but also the way families can split and reform in different ways, and about how the conduct of one person alters the conduct of another.  Truly a book you need to read.