SECOND WIFE, SECOND LIFE!

From the popular octogenarian columnist and inspirational author (The Messiah, 1987, etc.): a moving and refreshingly candid account of her second marriage. Announcing that ``this book is about the most exciting adventure of [my] life,'' Holmes tells how, in her early 70s, she met and married ``an incredible man'' with whom, for the first time in her life, she could share ``almost everything [I] thought and felt.'' Married for nearly 50 years to a devoted husband with whom, however, she had little in common, Holmes found widowhood a lonely business. But on New Year's Eve 1980, she received a surprise call from a stranger, one George Schmieler, who was to change her life. George, devastated by the recent death of his own spouse, Caroyln, had called because he'd been moved by reading a copy of Holmes's 1969 bestseller, I've Got to Talk to Somebody, God, which he'd found among his wife's possessions. Meetings and a proposal of marriage followed, and Holmes realized that, in George, she'd found the great love of her life. The couple married in 1981 and went on to enjoy a decade of togetherness until George's death—a decade that ``has been the happiest, most romantic, inspiring, and beautiful of all.'' But what gives Holmes's story a dimension beyond the record of true love and life with a remarkable man is the honesty with which she also records the darker side of a second marriage: the jealousy she felt for the years George had shared with his first wife; the awkwardness of moving into another woman's home; and the winning over of George's children—who, though adults, had nonetheless lost a beloved mother. A treat for Holmes fans and, for those less taken with the inspirational subtext, a realistic yet upbeat account of love and marriage in the sunset years.