Book jacket discolored Random House, 1978 book club edition, 250 pages When Isabel Moore's father dies, she finds herself at the age of thirty suddenly freed from eleven years of unbroken devotion to a helpless, bedridden man. Standing at his open grave, she realizes that she has no idea what she wants now, that she must indeed "invent" a new existence. For her first tentative steps into a world now strange to her, she turns to two childhood friends - gentle, supportive Eleanor, who has an apartment in the city, and tough, strong-minded Liz, married, with two children and a farm. At the same time, almost inadvertently, she becomes involved with two men. And just when she is about to grasp her future, the past reaches out to hold her back. An exploration of the nature of friendship and of desire, of filial love and guilt, of the hold of the past, Final Payments heralds the arrival of an important new novelist with a remarkable gift for creating real and affecting characters and situations that, however unexpected, ring with authenticity.