SOURCE: "The Woman Who Went Away," in Chicago Tribune Books, April 30, 1995, p. 1.

In the following review, Rubenstein praises Tyler's Ladder of Years as "virtually flawless."

Anne Tyler's wonderfully satisfying 13th novel begins with a newspaper headline: "BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION." The accompanying news item includes the few facts related to the sudden disappearance of Cordelia Grinstead, whose eyes are "blue or gray or perhaps green…." Then Tyler circles back to let us see the circumstances that trigger Delia's unpremeditated decision to vacate her current life—withouteven saying goodbye—to assume a new one.

The wife of a successful doctor (a family practitioner 17 years older than she) and the mother of three adolescent children, Delia still lives in the same house in which she grew up as the youngest of three daughters. Her father, also a doctor (recently deceased) left his practice to his younger partner, Delia's...