Schmidt Steps Back

When we last saw lawyer Albert Schmidt ("Schmidtie" to all near and dear), he was still reeling from the loss of the paradise he'd found with Carrie, a Hispanic waitress forty years his junior, who finally declined his marriage proposal, and settling into a tenuous truce with his only child, Charlotte, a humorless PR flack for Big Tobacco, who broke his heart by marrying a wonky young (and, ahem, Jewish) associate at Schmidt's white-shoe firm. Now, with both Carrie and Charlotte pregnant, Schmidt faces a life alone, with only the crumbs of grandfatherly status to sustain him. His only hope: the French widow of a former partner--as elusive as she is beautiful. Whether his rusty seduction skills can lure her from Paris to the Hamptons won't be known, though, until Schmidt endures one more ordeal by fire.