Robert and Lynn Ferguson are a picture-perfect couple with two beautiful daughters and a lovely home in an exclusive Connecticut community. Robert is on the fast track of a major corporation. Lynn is devoted to her family and good works. But the Fergusons closed doors hide a painful secret Lynn must keep from the world--and her children--at any cost . . .

Not even the Fergusons' best friends, Josie and Bruce Lehman, know of Lynn's shame. Social worker Josie sees her bruises, distrusts the too-ambitious, too-perfect Robert, and suspects the real cause of the children's increasingly disturbed behavior. But not even Josie can pierce Lynn's wall of silence, a wall that will not crumble until Lynn is forced to face herself--and the truth--at last.

Belva Plain's searing novel of a family's heartbreak, a woman's courage--and of a subject too often talked about only in Whispers.