?Examines the legal, emotional, and economic effects of separation and divorce on middle-class American women. The methodology is as interesting as the content. Halem role-plays a fictitious, separated woman, Sheila Ash, ' whose identity has been statistically constructed from divorce figures. ...When a competent scholar researches an important and timely issue with an imaginative and thought-provoking methodology, and organizes and writes the results clearly and well, then the academic community should take note, take sides, take issue, and take heart. This is an important book.?-Choice