It’s rare to find a novel these days that’s filled with characters so unforgettable you don’t want the book to end. And when you do get your hands on one, you can’t wait to tell your friends because you want to share the experience with them. That said, my friends, I’m here to tell you that unforgettable characters are the mainstay in Sheila Curran’s new novel, EVERYONE SHE LOVED. Check it out. . .
ABOUT THE NOVEL
A wise and triumphant novel about powerful bonds among four women who’ve come of age together only to discover that – when it comes to the essentials – life’s little instruction book will always need revising.
Penelope Cameron, loving mother, devoted wife and generous philanthropist, has convinced her husband and four closest friends to sign an outlandish pact. If Penelope should die before her two daughters are eighteen, her husband will not remarry without the permission of Penelope’s sister and three college roommates. For years, this contract gathers dust until the unthinkable happens. Suddenly, everyone she loved must find their way in a world without Penelope.
For Lucy Vargas, Penelope’s best friend, and a second mother to her daughters, nothing seems more natural than to welcome them into a home that had once belonged to their family, a lovely, sprawling, bed and breakfast on the beach. This bequest was only one of the many ways in which Penelope had supported Lucy’s career as a painter, declaring her talent too important to squander. But now, in the wake of a disaster that only lovable, worrisome Penelope could have predicted, Lucy has put her work on hold as she and Penelope’s husband, Joey, blindly grasp at anything that will keep the girls from sinking under the weight of their grief.
With the help of family and friends, the children slowly rebuild new lives. But just when things start to come together, the fragile serenity they have gained is suddenly threatened from within and the unbreakable bonds they share seem likely to dissolve after all.
In this moving and uplifting novel, Sheila Curran explores the faith one woman placed in her dearest friends, the care she took to protect her family, and the many ways in which romantic entanglements will confound and confuse even the most determined of planners. A story about growing up and moving on, about the sacrifices people make for one another, about the timeless legacy of love, Everyone She Loved is, above all, about the abiding strength of friendship.
BOOK RAVES
“EVERYONE SHE LOVED is peopled with women of strong appetites—for love, for sex, for food—and Sheila Curran has amazing insight into the love-hate relationship that women have with each other and their own bodies. Curran is a beautiful writer, both witty and evocative, and she knows how to keep a reader riveted. I was up way past my bedtime, unable to stop turning pages. I had to know what happened to this family and their tight-bound troupe of friends as they meddled and muddled toward hope and new beginnings in the wake devastating loss. I fell in love with them all, from artistic, earthy Lucy, to broken little Tessa, to the oh-so-tightly-wound and mercurial Clover. Read this book, then pass it on to your dearest friend. She’ll thank you.” Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stoppped Swimming
“Sheila Curran writes the novels that readers love — full of emotional complexity and rich plot twists, novels that echo our own deep desires and greatest fears. In her second novel, she takes on themes that touch us all — love, loss, motherhood, wifehood, and the sisterhood of friendship. It isn’t so much that Curran has found her greatest muse in the unbreakable bonds between women, but that the unbreakable bonds between women have have found their greatest writer in Sheila Curran.” — Julianna Baggott, best selling author of numerous books including THE PRETEND WIFE, MY HUSBANDS SWEETHEARTS, THE PRINCE OF FENWAY PARK
“Penelope Cameron May’s unusual last request sets off the action in this riveting novel of love and friendship, betrayal and lies. Sheila Curran draws the reader in and this inventive book won’t let go. Prepare to be surprised and moved. I read it in one delicious gulp.” Masha Hamilton, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE
Whoever thought death could be so complicated? Or that love could demand a task force, or that after so many broken hearts, one woman’s will could leave a legacy of such healing? Penelope Cameron, even in death, makes the lives of everyone around her richer-and that includes us, the readers of this brilliant novel. We hold our breath as minor flaws become monsters-when Lucy’s overdraft protection fees bring her to brink of foreclosure, when Joey’s concern for his daughter’s eating disorder leads him into the clutches of conniving fitness charlatan-but in the end, this group of friends and lovers really do take care of each other. Everyone She Loved is for everyone who knows that love works, even when it’s complicated, for everyone who screws up, and can still do the right thing after all, and for everyone who enjoys a great novel, with friendship and forgiveness at its heart.
Paul Shepherd, Mary McCarthy Award winning writer of More Like Not Running Away
‘Everyone She Loved’ was the voice inside my head – at a time when I first contemplated my own mortality … this could have been my husband, my girlfriends and my children … it raises every emotion and suppressed fear within us all, with a clarity that is both deeply uncomfortable and yet stridently beautiful Julz Graham, television host, DIMENSIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sheila Curran lives in Tallahassee, FL with her husband and children.
http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-She-Loved-Sheila-Curran/dp/1416590668/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243534513&sr=1-1
indie bound
http://www.indiebound.org/search/apachesolr_search/Everyone+She+Loved+Sheila+Curran
