What a Woman Must Do

My book group met today to discuss Faith Sullivan's latest book. Two years ago, we were fortunate to have Sullivan as a guest at our meeting, and she was most delightful. We thought we'd be intimidated by having her in our presence because we were going to discuss her book, "The Empress of One." But she was most interested in us as members and wanted to hear our opinions and was open to our questions about the journey of a writer in writing a book. Now on to her newest book. It is wonderful! However, the characters from "Cape Ann" and "Empress of One" are not in this book which disappointed one of our members.An issue that came up today is the whole rural scene about farmers who in the past decades have lost their farms, and what emotional turmoil and stress that causes. Kate, in the book, never did recover from their having to "sell" and move to town. So we felt sad when she died before Harriet was to get married to a farmer who had not lost it all, but was very successful with a 640 acre plot. This book caused us to cry and shed tears, which to me is always therapeutic. I find myself thinking about the characters and the story as I go about my busy days now of getting ready for Christmas. Treat yourself over the Holidays to a good read!

A wonderful tale of three generations of women living in Harvester, Minnesota, where Faith Sullivan's first two books also took place.Kate is 59 and has cared first for her niece Celia and now her niece's child Bess after Celia and her husband are killed. A simple woman she now looks back on her life as a farmer's wife and wonders how they lost the fdarm and life has managed to slip through her fingers.Her cousin Harriet is 39 and looking for love. Rejecting her farming family to live in a more advantageous community for work, Harriet moved in with Kate providing ming a real source of comfort to both Kate and Bess. But Harriet no longer wants to be a career woman and has fallen for a local farmer and doesn't quite know what to do.Finally there's Bess on the precipice of adult life and about to leave for college. Although she is tired of her small world, she also has ambivalent feelings about leaving home. And when a marrid man begins paying attention to her, she is really caught in a dangerous web of lies and guilt. And when Harriet announces that she soon will be soon marrying, both Kate and Bess's lives are turned upside down.This book is well written in a lovely and slow moving manner. It reminds one of other novels set in farming communities like My Antonia by Willa Cather and more recently Plainsong by Kent Haruf. I found both the plot and characters reaching put to me me from the beginning to end and continue to think about them even now. Looking forard now to reading Faith Sullivan's other books.

Whether it's a first love, love found later in life, or love of a life and husband now gone, these 3 women each search for happiness in small-town Minnesota. Their stories are filled with sadness, hope and longing and interwoven with tragedy and potential for happiness. Sullivan has once again crafted a novel with a fiercely strong central character forging ahead in spite of her losses. This character recalls another woman (whose name just escaped me and the book is loaned out!) in Sullivan's first book, The Cape Ann. Both women are independent, strong and longing for a better life -- for themselves and their families. Sullivan is a gifted writer whose portraits of rural life and women of great character and determination are beautifully and simply told. Her Cape Ann and Empress of One were big hits in our book club, What a Woman Must Do is being quickly circulated among our members and winning praise at every stop.

Actresses like Jessica Lange, Ann Bancroft, Shirle y MacLaine, Meryl Streep and Diane Kenton should be lining up at Faith Sullivan's door! Sullivan's newest novel, What a Woman Must Do, is heart-wrenching rich in character, relationships, forgiveness, the bittersweet blessings of love, longing and inevitable loss lovingly told against the background of a small prairie town in the 1950s. In language as simple and heartfelt as a Gramma Moses painting, Sullivan gently lifts the dotted Swiss priscilla curtains on a household of three women at three different pivotal points in their lives over three summer days in 1952. We get to know them, we instanly believe in them, and in short order we care about them deeply. This is a deeply moving, and satisfying book

If you're in a hurry, don't pick up this book. But if you want to treat yourself to a wonderful story over several days, a story about characters that grow on you and in your mind, you might consider this. The author makes you work for it, but the results are well worth the effort.