Passionate,profound, and deeply moving, The Hours is the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planing a party in honor of a beloved friend: Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb, and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories have interwtined, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.