Once, as an alternate juror, I found myself in sympathy with the victim, believed the defendant guilty but did not want the responsibility of decision. To my relief, the defendant and I were both discharged, and the oppressiveness of choice taken from me. Sue Miller's protagonist in While I Was Gone is given no such luxury. Nor will the consequences of her actions happen without great cost to herself and her family. As in The Good Mother, the author's best-known novel to date, Miller takes a basically sound woman, gives her what she wants and lets her botch it up. The result this time around is a delving into the seductive appeal of the edge, the need for a sense of accident, to feel fully alive.

Jo Becker, content in her marriage, responsible in her life, dedicated both to her family and to her veterinary practice, begins to confront a familiar, though dormant, restlessness. Cozy domestic arrangements and an absorbing job aren't quite cutting it. With exquisite precision, she describes her first recognition of what is happening to her: "I was suddenly aware of my state, in a way we often aren't. That is, I was abruptly and most intensely, sharply aware of all the aspects of life surrounding me, and yet of feeling neither part of it nor fully separated from it . . . "We feel this way sometimes in adolescence too . . . But then there's the burning impatience for the next thing to take shape, for whatever it is we are about to become and be to announce itself. This was different: there was, I supposed, no next thing."

After an early rebellion against the confines of a conventional upbringing and traditional marriage, Jo has settled into a picturesque New England town with her second husband, Daniel, a caring, handsome minister. Her moment of crisis begins as the couple is adjusting to a newly retrieved intimacy following the departure of the youngest of their three daughters.

The crisis itself is brought about by the reappearance of Eli Mayhew, a member of the group house she lived in under an assumed name and identity in the late '60s. After her furtive escape from her first marriage and her parents, this place became her refuge, and its occupants, especially another young woman, helped her blossom.

But the end of this interlude was marked by tragedy, and its far-reaching repercussions come back to haunt Jo when Eli Mayhew moves close by. More to the point, she creates conditions that foster conflict as she seeks once more a sense of possibility and, by extension, an awareness of randomness. As Jo admits, she envies her difficult daughter Cass and the outrageousness of her life as a singer in a road band.
Miller is astute at depicting the subtle and not-so-subtle interplay of daughters with each other and with their parents. To the author's credit, she doesn't try to reconcile the flux in these relationships by a final tying of all the bows; and her candor and lack of sentimentality are refreshing.

She also skillfully dissects the dailiness of Jo and Daniel's life together -- the companionship, the small irritations, the intermingling of pleasure with staleness. By Jo's account, this is a marriage, "lived happily, if not ever after, at least enough of the time." This said, Daniel himself leaves no vivid impression. While Miller works to round him out, he remains a little too good to be true and, for my taste, not all that interesting until close to the end. Jo's only real complaint about him is his frequent lack of emotional availability.

On this last matter, our heroine can get whiny. Sometimes, too, she gets foolish, blind to her own motives and thoughtless of others. It speaks to the author's sureness of timing that just when my patience with Jo wore thin and I wanted to shake her, another insight, a hint of wisdom came to her.

This well-written, well-crafted book is, in part, a study of the corrosive effects of secrets and deceits; in part a meditation on forgiveness; and in part a paean to plunges taken, even those with dire results. Miller stares us down, provokes questions, dares us not to "get it" about ourselves. She startles. She also satisfies expectations.