Irresistible Forces

For fourteen years, Steve and Meredith Whitman have sustained a marriage of passion and friendship despite two all-consuming careers. Meredith is a partner at one of Wall Street's top firms; Steve, a gifted physician, chose an urban trauma ward over the money he could have earned elsewhere. The one thing missing is children — Steve longs for them, and Meredith keeps putting motherhood off.

Then Meredith is offered an extraordinary opportunity at a young high-tech company in San Francisco, three thousand miles away. Steve urges her to take it, promising to follow once he finds work of his own so they can finally start their family.

Neither of them reckoned on the frustrations of a bicoastal marriage. Steve's job keeps him in New York for months longer than planned, and their weekends together fall prey to their schedules. Alone in San Francisco, Meredith spends long hours with her charismatic boss, the entrepreneur Callan Dow, while Steve works late shifts and takes the occasional dinner with a colleague. Almost unnoticed, the Whitmans begin living separate lives in increasingly separate worlds.