Heart

Overview

College teaching assistant Ruth Tyack is excitedly planning for a new job in Rome when she falls in love with Tom, a poet and guest-lecturer at the college. Despite their intense feelings for each other, Ruth and Tom must part after a single romantic together. Tom is married and has too much respect for his wife and a deep bond with his special needs’ son. In Italy, Ruth is caught up in a whirlwind romance with Bruno, the scion of an aristocratic family. Their marriage is happy but brief as Bruno is killed in an auto accident and, in her grief, Ruth turns to his handsome cousin, Peter, who has long been in love with her. But once remarried, Peter demands that Ruth model herself after other wives of wealthy Italians—docile homemakers and mothers who look the other way when their husbands have affairs. As her unhappiness grows, Ruth keeps returning to her feelings for Tom and the love that has never been extinguished. Having kept in touch with him over the years, she’s been deeply affected by his personal tragedy and the anguish he faced as his wife suffered a series of breakdowns and was committed to an institution. Should she remain in an increasingly untenable marriage or follow her heart? The rerelease of this bestselling contemporary romance has been updated to include three new chapters which reveal the path she takes.

Reviews

Ruth Tyack is a graduate student when she meets poet Tom Jeffers, and they fall deeply and instantly in love. Unfortunately Ruth has accepted a teaching position in Rome, and Tom has a wife and a retarded son. Because of the intensity of their passion, Ruth and Tom vow not to try to get in touch with each other, but in the years that follow, their thoughts are with each other constantly. In Rome, full of pain and separation from Tom, Ruth meets Bruno, an Italian who courts her slowly but determinely. She marries Bruno, who is killed in a car accident; Tom's wife goes insane and he is left to care for his son. Ruth is drawn to Bruno's sexy cousin Peter; they also marry, but he turns out to be a chauvinistic lout who takes away her freedom and self-esteem. Pregnant with Peter's child, Ruth leaves him for an inevitable reunion with Tom, nine years after their first meeting. The dialogue in "Heart" is a bit stilted and cliche-ridden, and action tends toward the melodramatic, but Ross has written an entertaining, unabashedly romantic story. - Publishers Weekly in 1982

Author Biography

 Susan Ross is a marriage and family therapist, a teacher, and a writer. She lives in Akron, Ohio.