Leslie A. Rasmussen was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from UCLA. She went on to write television comedies for Gerald McRaney, Burt Reynolds, Roseanne Barr, Norm McDonald, and Drew Carey, as well as The Wild Thornberrys and Sweet Valley High. After leaving the business to raise her boys, she obtained a master’s degree in nutrition and ran her own business for ten years. Recently, she’s written over twenty essays for Huffington Post and spoken on panels discussing empowering women in midlife. Leslie is a member of The Writers Guild of America, as well as Women In Film and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. After Happily Ever After is her debut novel and has won over fifteen awards. Her next novel, The Stories We Cannot Tell, will be released next year. In her free time, Leslie loves to read, exercise, and hang out with friends. Married with two sons, she lives in Los Angeles.

Maggie Dolin is forty-five and isn’t dealing with getting older very well. Seventeen years ago, she gave up her job in publishing to raise her daughter, Gia—but now her only child is about to leave for college, and Maggie isn’t sure what her new purpose will be. She’s been the caretaker and nurturer for so long that she can’t even remember the last time someone took care of her. She wishes Jim, her husband of nineteen years, would take that role on—but he’s been distracted and disconnected, and she’s convinced he’s hiding something from her. Her self-involved, judgmental mother and resentful brother, meanwhile, are certainly no help, and her father—the only person in her life who’s always been there for her and asked nothing in return—is dealing with increasingly serious health issues, leaving Maggie without her rock.

As all these stressors pile on, a chance meeting with a younger man causes Maggie to act in a way that is completely out of character for her. As she gets deeper in, she’s forced to make some big decisions about what she wants and deserves—decisions that could change her life forever.