She has become a popular, critically acclaimed novelist and is promoting her third and most recent novel, preparing to travel to Europe. Eddie and Marion's affair leads Marion to leave Ted and Ruth at the end of the summer. Ted picks Eddie specifically to tempt Marion because he bears a striking resemblance to his son Thomas, 'the confident one'. If Marion had an affair, especially with a teenager, it would strengthen the case for custody to be awarded to him. Ted has always conducted extramarital affairs and would likely lose in a custody battle for Ruth.

Marion, unable to forget her dead sons, shows little affection to her daughter. Eddie is unwittingly drawn into a plot orchestrated by Ted to drive his unhappy wife, Marion, to infidelity. He hires Eddie O'Hare, a teenager who attends Phillips Exeter Academy, the same school Ruth's two late brothers attended, to work as his assistant for the summer. Ruth's father, Ted Cole, is a successful writer and illustrator of books for children. Her two older brothers died several years earlier in a tragic accident, and she is constantly reminded of their presence by the pictures of the boys' childhood hanging on the walls of the Cole family home. Although she is a loved child, her parents do not have a happy marriage. The year is 1958 and Ruth Cole is 4 years old.

The first third of the novel was adapted into the film The Door in the Floor in 2004. A Widow for One Year is a 1998 novel by American writer John Irving, the ninth of his novels to be published.

A widow for one year