Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams 1973

Rita Walden is a depressed, middle-aged New Yorker. Always tired, Rita is prone to nightmares, and when she does dream more pleasant thoughts, they are of her childhood on the family farm. In her mind, she settled for second best when she married her ophthalmologist husband, Harry Walden. He represents a stable life she feels she traded for romance and vigor, contrasted with the older farm boy she once crushed on at age 12½.

She is constantly bickering with her mother, Mrs. Pritchard, with her sister, Betty Goody, and with her grown-up daughter, Anna, who has issues of her own.

Rita is estranged from her son, Bobby Walden; she is in denial about his homosexual orientation, a tension that strains the family dynamics.

After Rita’s mother dies suddenly, she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown in dealing with her mother’s estate, especially when the family talks about selling her beloved farm, which she still intends to pass on to Bobby.

Harry believes a European vacation could give Rita some needed distance and clarity, and it also holds the possibility of visiting Bobby, who is currently living in Amsterdam.

Though Rita faces several crises during the trip, many of her tensions ease as she watches Harry revisit Bastogne for the first time since his days in World War II, a moment that reconnects parts of their past with the present and opens a path toward a more hopeful outlook.