The Four Seasons

Mary Alice Monroe always has wonderful insight into emotions and relationships. Her style of writing is crisp and beautiful. In The Four Seasons, she does a great job of interweaving the story of sisters who have unresolved conflicts and family issues. Their journey--literal and emotional--develops the characters on lots of levels. The story is like a symphony, with some notes and instruments taking the lead while others subside. Bottomline--this novel is uplifting, insightful, and comes to a full and deeply satisfying conclusion. Monroe is a gifted author.

Birdie, Jilly, and Rose, three of the sisters in the Season family, gather together to celebrate the life of Merry, the youngest Season sister, who has died. Jilly returns home from Paris, where she has lived for the last twenty years. A once successful model, she returns home almost penniless. Birdie, a successful doctor, is unhappy in her marriage, and domineering to her only daughter, Hannah.Rose, Merry's caretaker, has a secret online friendship with a man whose online name is DannyBoy. She is at odds with what to do now with her life, now that Merry is gone.After the funeral, the family lawyer sits down with the sisters to disclose Merry's last wishes. Merry's last wish is for the sisters to find Spring, the baby Jilly gave up for adoption 26 years ago. With this request, the past is opened up, and the sisters must decide how to honor Merry's request. Together they embark on a journey through the past, and separately they embark on private quests, as they determine the paths they must follow.

This is a book for anyone who had a sister or, like me, wished they had a sister.Jilly, Birdie, and Rose - ¾ of the four Season sisters are gathered at their childhood home in Evanston, Illinois after the death of the fourth sister, Merry. It is Merry's last wish that will have the other three on an adventure which will not only have them searching for the child Jilly gave up for adoption 26 years earlier, but for themselves at the same time.Jilly who left home years ago for elegance and wealth in Europe has returned for good. Despite her fancy clothes and furs, she is broke and all alone. Seemingly without purpose in life, her modeling career over, she really doesn't know who else to turn to but her sisters. Her whole life is a sham - will she be able to tell her sisters how broke she really is? Will she ever find the love of her life? And will her search for the daughter she gave up for adoption be successful?The second sister, Birdie, has become a physician. Always the studious one, she has married Dennis Connor, a man who Jilly dated as a teenager, and has a teenage daughter, Hannah, who in typical teenage fashion is giving her mother a rather difficult time. Birdie's husband, too, is giving her grief. They don't seem to have the closeness they once had, and when Birdie insists on accompanying Jilly on her search for her birth daughter, Dennis gives her an ultimatum - come home now or our marriage is over. Birdie still chooses to side with her sister. Third sister, Rose has been living at home taking care of the youngest, Merry, after the death of their parents. She really didn't mind and has juggled her caretaking duties with word processing at home. Rose doesn't get out much but she has traveled the world and met many people via the internet. She has been corresponding with one person in particularly, a truckdriver who calls himself "Dannyboy." She hasn't let her sister in on the fact that in his emails, Dannyboy seems to be coming more and more romantically interested. What will happen when Dannyboy insists on meeting Rose?Event though the fourth sister, Merry, has died by the time the book begins, she is as much a character as any of other others and, in fact some might argue she is the most important character. She becomes known to the reader through a series of flashbacks and via her sisters' recollections. All that is known to the reader in the beginning is that Merry had a childhood accident leaving her forever a child. It is her final request that brings the sisters together on a quest which makes up the second half of the book - a quest which will definitely, for all of them, reveal more than any of them had believed.There are so many wonderful and realistic scenes in this book that it's hard to know where to begin. Each sister is so different from the other, it's hard to believe they were raised by the same set of parents. Each of them too is still baring the guilt of Merry's accident - each of them feeling

In Evanston, Illinois, three of the four Seasons siblings are coming home to attend the funeral of their youngest sister Merry. Only thirty-two, Merry died when her lungs finally failed after a long period of illness. The oldest of the sisters, Jilly flies in from France where her career as a model is just about over. Birdie, accompanied by her spouse and teenage daughter, drives down from Wisconsin. Rose, being Merry's caretaker over the years, waits for the arrival of her two sisters.After the funeral ends, the family attorney announces the will, which is standard stuff until he gives the siblings a video and a letter from Merry, who was brain damaged in an accident many years ago. In both, Merry pleads with her siblings to bring home Spring, the daughter that Jilly gave up for adoption when she was a teen. The trio reacts differently to Merry's deathbed request, but in the end blood proves thicker than water and an odyssey to "return home" by finding Spring begins.THE FOUR SEASONS is a deep contemporary relationship drama that showcases the personalities of four siblings. The story line is loaded with emotion as each of the three surviving Seasons cope with Merry's death and her request in their own way. With novels like this one and THE BOOK CLUB, Mary Alice Monroe continues to be one of the leaders of complex female relationship dramas that hit home to the audience.Harriet Klausner