ROBIN STOKES is a successful insurance professional recovering from a dead-end love affair. "They say love is a two-way street. But I don't believe it because the one I've been on for the last two years was a dirt road." After months of depression , shopping and dating all the wrong men, she's getting by with a little help from her friends -- and still determined to find the Real Thing...

BERNADINE HARRIS has the kids,the house, and the BMW, but a young white bookkeeper has her husband. Now, propped by her prescription for Xanax and her first pack of cigarettes in 106 days, she's entering a whole new world....

GLORIA MATTHEWS owns one of the few stylish beauty salons for black women in Phoenix, and finds solace in religion, her teenage son, other people's hair, and food. Her social and emotional bank accounts are low, but a sweet suprise is about to open up her life....

SAVANNAH JACKSON is a public relations executive -- educated, attractive, and unmarried. On the verge of moving to her fourth city in fifteen years, she's lobbying the Lord, "Could You send me a decent man? Could he be full of zest, and please, a slow, tender, passionate lover -- and could he already be what he aspired to?"

• novelfiction