Summary
When Jack McGill is awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call, his life turns upside-down. His ex-wife Rachel's car has tumbled over a guard rail near her home in Big Sur, and she is in a coma. He hurries to her side, more for their daughters' sake than for Rachel's, still not understanding why she left him six years before. But Samantha and Hope need him, and he is their father.

When he arrives at the hospital, he is met by Katherine, Rachel's best friend, who speaks for Rachel when Rachel can't.

Stepping back into family life, Jack has to deal with a withdrawn Hope, a belligerent Samantha, and a protective Katherine - all, while he faces a professional crisis back in San Francisco. In the hours that he sits by Rachel's bedside, he reminisces about their marriage, learns about the new Rachel from her daughters, her friends, and her art, and weighs his career against being part of the family again.

Barbara's Comments
'The challenge in this book was in creating a complete, complex character when that character, the heroine, is comatose for most of the story. My publisher was wary, as was my agent. But I never doubted that it would work. I knew that the picture painted by Rachel's daughters, her friends, and her art would be thorough and rich.
 
'I loved writing this story. It was a departure from my other writing in many ways ... written from a male point of view, set in California (as opposed to New England), making use of flashbacks. At its heart, though, it is the story of getting back to what's important in life. That's a familiar theme of mine. '

Coast Road is special in one other regard. Katherine, Rachel's best friend, is a breast cancer survivor. The amazing response of readers to this feisty and successful woman led to my non-fiction book, Uplift: Secrets From the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors. I will be forever grateful to Katherine for that.'