What traumatic event propels Sandy to examine his life and beliefs?

Following the mysterious suicide of his wife Clara after thirtyone years of marriage, Stern must come to grips with the "imponderable duties darkly rooted in the hard soil of [his] own sense of filial and professional obligation." Stern must also learn to venture out of the neatly ordered world he had created for himself as he explores the reason for his wife's suicide and rethink some of the assumptions of his own life.