Robert and Lynn Ferguson

are a picture-perfect couple  with two beautiful daughters and a lovely home in  an exclusive Connecticut community. Robert is on  the fast track of a major corporation. Lynn is  devoted to her family and good works. But in the  Fergusons' closed doors hide a painful secret Lynn must  keep from the world-and her children-at any  cost... Not even the Fergusons's best friends, Josie and  Bruce Lehman, know of Lynn's shame. Social worker  Josie sees her bruises distrusts the  too-ambitious, too perfect Robert, and suspects the real cause  of the children's increasingly disturbed behavior.  But not even Josie can pierce Lynn's wall of  silence, a wall that will not crumble until Lynn is  forced to face herself-and the truth-at last. Belva  Plain's searing novel of a family's heartbreak, a  woman's courage, and a subject too often talked  about only in whispers.