Tracey Barnes Priestley holds a Master’s degree in Community Counseling Psychology and spent many years as a therapist before moving into the field of personal coaching. An award-winning syndicated columnist for fourteen years (Juggling Jobs and Kids), Tracey currently blogs about issues she faces in the second half of life at www.thesecondhalfonline.com.

Though educated as a painter, fifty-three-year-old Lee MacPhearson has lived her life coloring inside of duck_pond_webthe lines. The quintessential working mother of four, Lee has been the proper faculty wife—an ill-fitting role at best—while somehow managing to nurture her passion project, Mad Dog Gallery, into one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notable galleries. The casualty in all of this has been Lee’s marriage—and her sense of self. Having just delivered her last child to college, Lee is overwhelmed by her empty nest, and she’s left wondering what happened to the woman she once was. Ultimately, however, Barb Yakamura, Lee’s best friend and the brilliant and irreverent Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is the one who truly overflows with ideas about what Lee should do—including one that leads Lee, Brian, and the entire MacPhearson family to an ending they never expected.