The Wednesday Sister's ~

The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton ~~

Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of Meg Waite Clayton’s beautifully written, poignant, and sweeping novel of five women who, over the course of four decades, come to redefine what it means to be family.For thirty-five years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967. These “Wednesday Sisters” seem to have little in common: Frankie is a timid transplant from Chicago, brutally blunt Linda is a remarkable athlete, Kath is a Kentucky debutante, quiet Ally has a secret, and quirky, ultra-intelligent Brett wears little white gloves with her miniskirts. But they are bonded by a shared love of both literature–Fitzgerald, Eliot, Austen, du Maurier, Plath, and Dickens–and the Miss America Pageant, which they watch together every year.As the years roll on and their children grow, the quintet forms a writers circle to express their hopes and dreams through poems, stories, and, eventually, books. Along the way, they experience history in the making: Vietnam, the race for the moon, and a women’s movement that challenges everything they have ever thought about themselves, while at the same time supporting one another through changes in their personal lives brought on by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success.Humorous and moving, The Wednesday Sisters is a literary feast for book lovers that earns a place among those popular works that honor the joyful, mysterious, unbreakable bonds between friends.

This book reminds me of the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" as it progresses through the lives of these wonderful women from Bobby Kennedy being shot until now. I haven't been so engrossed in a book, as I was with this one, in a long time. This book is a clear example of the power of friendship and how it can endure over the years. I laughed with them and I cried with them and I didn't want the book to end. And when I finished, I emailed all of my best girlfriends just to tell them I love them. This book is a must read for any woman with girlfriends! A+

In celebration of this amazing and now national bestselling book being released in paperback on Tuesday, I wanted to bring this review back up to the top for those of you that may have missed it the first time around. If you're looking for that "perfect" book for your mom, grandmother, aunt, sister or best girlfriend for Mother's Day ~ then this is it. It's a story that they'll then want to share with all of their girlfriends as soon as they are done with it. It would also make a great choice for your next book club meeting. And of course Meg is available for chats with your book group via phone, just email through this link and she'll get in touch with you :)