Fall From Grace

Fall From Grace by Danielle Steel   400 pages

What is a girl to do when her idealic life with the rich man of her dreams suddenly comes crashing down to an end?   Sydney and Andrew Wells totally devoted to each other living the high life of fabulous trips, beautiful manse, a collection of artwork, jewelry, clothes, everything but a current will.   When Andrew crashes his motorcycle and is killed Sydney is left to deal with the aftermath and it isn't pretty.   Andrew's ex-wife raised two vindictive adult daughters who literally hate their father's second wife, Sydney.   Sydney had nothing to do with their parents' break-up.    Andrew and Sydney didn't even meet until years after his divorce was final.    Sydney too, was a divorcee.   Her husband walked out on her and the girls, met someone new and started a second family totally ignoring his first one.   Sydney's girls grew up feeling the love of a caring father through Andrew and all were happy in the huge home until the girls grew up and moved out to live their own lives.   Now Andrew was dead and of all the loving things he had done for all of them he had never changed his will and at his death, everything he owned went to his biological daughters.  When he and Sydney first got married they signed a pre-nup so Sydney essentially signed away her right to contest anything.   And even though they had been happily married for several years it had never occurred to Andrew who was athletic to ever think about the eventuality of death.  No provisions whatsoever were made for Sydney and her step daughters gave her a month to leave her home.   She was only allowed to keep items received by her as gifts and her clothes but she was not allowed to take anything else out of the house.   Andrew had given Sydney an apartment in France as a gift so she was able to hold onto that with a lot of back and forth between lawyers.    This is an excellent story of love, loss and how one must find ways to continue on after a loved one dies.   The story goes in so many directions that I don't want to spoil it for the reader but know it is a very well told story that is only beginning with Andrew's death.    Many lessons are taught her for women to be mindful and not depend solely on a man for their living, if something happens to that man, the woman MUST have a plan B in place.    It teaches that women shouldn't give up their careers for a man nor give up their income on his promise to take care of them, life has ways of changing in the blink of an eye and women must be prepared to carry on in that possibility.   Excellent story.   I would highly recommend this one to anyone looking for a good story to read and especially for young women to get their eyes opened to tragedies that can happen and that they need to be prepared for.