Jean Stubbs has long been known in this

country as well as in England as a master

storyteller, acclaimed for her vivid his-

torical novels. With her most recent

book, 1988 s A Lasting Spring, she earned

even wider poise, and won a legion of

new readers, for her story of the Second

World War. Now, in Like We Used To Be,

this beloved writer has written a book

that will place her in the first rank of

contemporary novelists: a warm, beauti-

fully woven, and utterly absorbing tale of

two sisters and their interlocking

destinies.

Leila and Zoe, as their friends might

say, are as different as chalk and cheese.

In July 1953 the beautiful Zoe is getting

married--happily ever after, assumes

everyone. Meanwhile Leila, an artist and

a renegade, is sculpting her life in a very

different fashion. By June of 1969 the

sisters are coming to terms with lives that

evolved in ways neither of them could

have foretold.