Traveling alone, John Moody turns out to be that man after getting lost and stopping to ask Arlyn for directions. They fall in love and get married, but soon Arlyn finds out that John may have been a mistake. He is cold and distant at times. John himself feels like he made a mistake also, that she isn’t the one for him and that he is wasting his life on her. They stay together and have a son named Sam. John shows no love for Sam because he doesn’t know how, mostly because of his own father.

Loneliness drives Arlyn into infidelity when she meets a man named George Snow. She soon has to break off the affair with Snow due to public rumors. But, she gets pregnant again, this time by Snow, but it is brought up as John’s and he thinks it is his. The baby is a young girl named Blanca.

The rest of the book follows the lives of Sam and Blanca. It shows how the death of Arlyn affects them and how it haunts them. More importantly, it shows how loneliness and love (or the lacking of) can start somewhere and travel down the line of a family.

The most interesting aspect of this book is that John Moody at times is such a despicable character, but it seems not to be his fault. I learned to sympathize with him and he seems to be the saddest part of this book. It is not until he is older and Arlyn had passed away, that John realizes that she was the one for him and that he was an awful man and father.

The audio book of this is broken into 6 discs, perfectly breaking down the story into three parts. The first 2 discs follow Arlyn, the second set follow Sam, and the final follow Blanca and end with some closure from John. Eerie, beautiful music slips in and out of the background as the discs close and begin, or when there is a particularly important act in the story. I also enjoyed the voice of Mare Winningham, who gave the characters life with her soft tone. She was interesting to listen to when Sam speaks or when Blanca is a child.

I have never read a novel by Alice Hoffman, and actually have never heard of her. But this book has made me more interested in her writing and I may even try to read more of her stories. Some call Skylight Confessions a ghost story, but I think it is more of a fairy tale, filled with mysticism and the way love sometimes works.

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