From the bestselling author of THE RED TENT come a contemporary novel that explores the burden of secrets, the weight of grief and the healing power of female friendship When Kathleen meets Joyce, each woman has come to a turning point in her life. Kathleen, whose sister died of breast cancer fifteen years earlier, has just been diagnosed herself and finds her world abruptly thrown into terrifying turmoil. While Joyce, increasingly distant from her awkward, adolescent daughter, is taking stock of her marriage and family, and struggling to get to grips with a burgeoning career as a novelist. Neither realizes that their chance meeting will result in a life-altering friendship. A mutual appreciation of books initially brings the women together and they rapidly fall into friendship, taking long walks along Good Harbor beach and talking about their lives. Piece by piece, they begin to share their personal histories and acknowledge how much they can learn from each other. But long-hidden secrets are often difficult to reveal and only after some painful soul-searching do they each come to terms with the fact that sharing those startling secrets can help them confront their emotional scars. Good Harbor is a rich and moving novel about the tragedy of loss, the insidious nature of family secrets and, ultimately, the redemptive power of friendship.
In my first novel, The Red Tent, I re-imagined the culture of biblical women as close, sustaining, and strong, but I am not the least bit nostalgic for that world without antibiotics, or birth control, or the printed page. Women were restricted and vulnerable in body, mind, and spirit, a condition that persists wherever women are not permitted to read.
When I was a child, the public library on Osborne Terrace in Newark, New Jersey, was one of the first places I was allowed to walk to all by myself. I went every week, and I can still draw a map of the children's room, up a flight of stairs,where the Louisa May Alcott books were arranged to the left as you entered.
Nonfiction, near the middle of the room, was loaded with biographies. I read several about Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Helen Keller, with whom I share a birthday.
But by the time I was 11, the children's library was starting to feel confining,so I snuck downstairs to the adult stacks for a copy of The Good Earth. (I had overheard a grown-up conversation about the book and it sounded interesting.)The librarian at the desk glanced at the title and said I wasn't old enough for the novel and furthermore my card only entitled me to take out children's books.
I defended my choice. I said my parents had given me permission, which was only half a fib since my mother and father had never denied me any book. Eventually,the librarian relented and I walked home, triumphant. I had access to the BIG LIBRARY. My world would never be the same.
