THE BLUE GIRL, CANDY LEE CAINE

MIKE AND CANDICE HOLDER'S ONCE NEAR-PERFECT MARRIAGE has become mysteriously troubled. He holds himself solely responsible for their problems but has avoided confronting them head-on through seemingly respectable immersion in his career. Equally into avoidance, her reaction has been to retreat ever more deeply into herself.

UNABLE TO COMPREHEND why their relationship has gone so far off the rails, they've been overcome by feelings of ennui and malaise and are living on the brink of totally unraveling. The situation is having ruinous effects on their partnership as well as on his professional life.

IN A MISGUIDED EFFORT to restore their once idyllic lifestyle, Mike orchestrates a relocation to a small-town Texas setting in which he thinks a return to the basic values and sense of connectedness they seem to have lost along their way might be possible. All goes well until he makes an innocent decision that drives them over the edge and leads to what could be described as simultaneous emotional breakdowns. During their struggle to cope with this disaster, he learns he had unwittingly struck the tip of an enormous iceberg and is forced to admit that as a husband and provider he'd been far less clever than he thought!