Told in alternating first person points-of-view, An Unfinished Marriage begins in October 1988. Sarah Glasser, 36, and Adam Glasser, 40, live on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, in a Victorian house they are renovating. Their fifteen-year marriage, already frayed by loss and past disappointment, is further damaged when Adam comes home hours late from a business meeting, drunk and agitated. He has been with Sarah's best friend, Carolyn Jeffrey, at her Austin apartment. He claims they have only been talking, but Sarah is suspicious. Adam tells her he isn't happy, that he's no longer in love with her, and he's leaving. He has no plan for where he's going he just wants out.
Shaken and frightened by the thought of life alone raising their two sons, Joel and Cody, and finishing the work on the house by herself, Sarah talks Adam out of leaving so compulsively in the middle of the night. With reluctance, he agrees to stay but the reconciliation is tenuous and uneasy. This incident sets the stage for all that follows: stormy arguments, Adam's binge drinking; their unsatisfying sex life; his purposeful absence from family obligations and social gatherings; and Sarah's eventual, inevitable rebellion and slow-burn affair with the contractor, Troy Middleton, who is in charge of the renovation of their century-old house.
While the collapse of a marriage is a tried-and-true plot, the characters in An Unfinished Marriage are complex and relatable, with humor lightening the drama and propelling the novel forward. Ending in a surprising yet satisfying way, the layers of the story peel away to reveal familiar feelings of devotion, betrayal, selfishness, and the complicated love between women and men, parents and children, and friends who sometimes become enemies.