Everything Is Interrupted

Author Terry McMillan based her book How Stella Got Her Groove Back in part on the intimate details of her own island romance with a man 23 years her junior. It started on vacation when 43-year-old Terry spotted 20-year-old Jonathan Plummer. Their affair blossomed quickly, but after five passion-filled days, the vacation ended and Terry flew back to California.

From there, Terry says she wrote Stella as a fantasy about continuing her affair with Jonathan, believing that she'd never see him again. Terry could not get the two-decades-younger Jonathan out of her head. They talked on the phone every day. After three months, she invited him to her home for a visit.

Jonathan's visit turned into three years of living with Terry. As the semi-fictional story in Stella was turning into reality, the book became a bestseller and was adapted into a blockbuster movie starring Angela Basset and Taye Diggs. Scores of lonely women suddenly considered finally taking that vacation to Jamaica.

"He was so sexy," Terry says of Jonathan. "I really do think I did see him as a work of art because I thought he was beautiful. I loved him to death. Jonathan was very sensual and a lot of times I think Jonathan was surprised how well he could please me."

Three years after they met, Jonathan and Terry were married. Then, after six years of marriage, Jonathan dropped the mother of all bombshells.