05 | August | 2009

Sarah McConnell’s husband had been dead for three months when she saw him in the grocery store.

What does a woman do when she’s thirty-nine, childless, and completely alone for the first time in her life? Does it mean she’s crazy to think she sees her late husband beside a display of pumpkins? Or is it just what people do, a natural response to grief that will fade in time? That’s what Sarah McConnell’s friends told her, that it was natural, would last a season, and then fade away.

But what if there was another answer? What if he was really there? They never found the body, after all. What if he is still here somehow, and about to walk back into her life?

* * * * * * *

The Widow’s Season is an intriguing novel. The premise caught my attention immediately and I read the book in a few hours. I figured out how it would play out early on in the book but it was interesting to read how it happened. That said, I found it difficult to warm up to any of the characters. They seemed cold and distant. That was kind of the vibe I felt throughout the novel. Maybe that’s the point?

The aspect of the book that I enjoyed the most was Brodie’s writing – when Sarah’s senses seemed to awaken. I loved the descriptions of food, scents, and music. Simply beautiful. If you’re looking for something a little different give The Widow’s Season a try.

Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin

published

December 29th 2009 by Random House

binding

Hardcover, 416 pages

isbn13

9780345483201

From Gail Godwin, three-time National Book Award finalist and acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Evensong and The Finishing School, comes a sweeping new novel of friendship, loyalty, rivalries, redemption, and memory.

It is the fall of 1951 at Mount St. Gabriel’s, an all-girls school tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina. Tildy Stratton, the undisputed queen bee of her class, befriends Chloe Starnes, a new student recently orphaned by the untimely and mysterious death of her mother. Their friendship fills a void for both girls but also sets in motion a chain of events that will profoundly affect the course of many lives, including the girls’ young teacher and the school’s matriarch, Mother Suzanne Ravenel.

Fifty years on, the headmistress relives one pivotal night, trying to reconcile past and present, reaching back even further to her own senior year at the school, where the roots of a tragedy are buried.

In Unfinished Desires, a beloved author delivers a gorgeous new novel in which thwarted desires are passed on for generations—and captures the rare moment when a soul breaks free.

Waiting on Wednesday can be found at Breaking the Spine