''The Woman Who Lived in a Prologue'' tells the story of Ariadne Arkady, a Jewish matriarch who was brought to America when she was 4 and looks back on her life as a series of false starts: a humiliating first love affair, a horrific illegal abortion, a suicide attempt, the emotional illness of a son, her husband's discovery of her adultery, her spiriting of a peace-activist grandson to Canada during the Vietnam War.