Here’s a blissful summer novel

FICTION the woman is the bride.

Audra has finessed the invitation to help her husband’s ex-wife get approval by a condo board, even though she doesn’t know her predecessor, either. She’s on a mission to help almost everyone, especially people she barely knows.

Once the mistress of a venture capitalist named Graham, Audra is now his much younger wife. A dozen years into their marriage, Graham suspects Audra is scouting for his replacement. He adores her ability to dazzle and amuse, while he is confounded by her nature. They’re that couple who appear not to fit together but somehow does.

If the characters, with their utter lack of financial concerns, seem reminiscent of the novelist Laurie Colwin (“Happy All the Time”), this is no fluke. The book opens with a quotation from Colwin, who died in 1992: “Before you became my mistress I led a blameless life.”

“Standard Deviation” derives its title from an Asperger’s diagnosis: A doctor suggests their son’s “score for social development problems is also elevated, again by more than a standard deviation.”

Heiny crafts indelible scenes, such as the one of drunken parents at a Cub Scouts cocktail party — no appetizers, plenty of Jell-O shots — that Audra and Graham attend in the hopes of landing Matthew play dates.

Readers searching for a blissful summer novel, a polished delight, look no further.