“Delia watches herself get up from the beach and walk away. She watches herself leave her family without a word, hitch a ride to a new town, buy a new dress in a new style, and find a job and a room in a boardinghouse.” Delia, the protagonist ofAnne Tyler’s novel “Ladder of Years,” precipitously leaves her husband and three grown children during a beach vacation. Delia’s family can’t fathom why. She’s not sure either; she just wants to start from scratch without attachments and family responsibilities. Most of all, she craves time to herself. Solitude.