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The Saving Graces: A Novel |  |
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The Saving Graces: A Novel | |
For ten years, Emma, Rudy, Lee, and Isabel have shared a deep affection that has helped them deal with the ebb and flow of expectations and disappointments common to us all. Calling themselves the Saving Graces, the quartet is united by understanding, honesty, and acceptance -- a connection that has grown stronger as the years go by...
Though these sisters of the heart and soul have seen it all, talked through it all, Emma, Rudy, Lee, and Isabel will not be prepared for a crisis of astounding proportions that will put their love and courage to the ultimate test.
After college, Gaffney taught 12th grade English at East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, "for one excruciating year.The kids were great, but they were bigger than me and I was scared of them."Returning to Chapel Hill, instead of finishing her master's degree in education, she took a job as a freelance court reporter, and pursued that career in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., for the next fifteen years.
In January of 1984, Gaffney discovered a malignant lump in her breast."I was positive I was dying; I gave myself five years.Time to decide, and fast, what to do with the rest of my too-short life."In the end, the decision was easy because it was what she'd always wanted to do: write books and live in the country.In 1986, she and her husband left Washington and moved to rural southern Pennsylvania, where they live today.
There Gaffney began the first of what would be twelve published historical romance novels.The first, Sweet Treason, appeared in 1989 and won the Romance Writers of America's Golden Heart as well as other first-book awards.Six of her novels have been nominated for RWA Rita awards, and Wild at Heart (1997) was among ten finalists for the reader-nominated Favorite Book of the Year Award.
After a dozen books, Gaffney says she began to feel restless."I'd run out of stories I wanted to tell in the context of historical romance.And I had an urge to put more of myself in my novels.I'll always tell stories, but now I wanted to change the truth/fantasy ratio, weight it more toward my real life."
In June of 1999, HarperCollins published The Saving Graces, Gaffney's hardcover fiction debut."Real life" definitely played a part in this story of four women friends, one of whom battles a cancer recurrence."I've belonged to the same women's group for almost 20 years.Eight years ago, we lost one of our members to breast cancer.The Saving Graces tells her story, not mine."More than that, it explores issues of love, friendship, trust, and commitment among women.Gaffney says she hopes it speaks to the universal experience of women blessed with the gift of close friendships.
The Saving Graces enjoyed bestseller status on the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and other national lists.
Circle of Three was Gaffney's second hardcover novel, published by HarperCollins in June of 2000.The protagonist is a member of the "sandwich generation," a woman who both has a mother and a daughter and is a mother and a daughter.Gaffney explores the reality of women's lives in the context of three generations, grandmother, mother, and daughter.Told in alternating viewpoints, the women wrestle with issues of grief and guilt, aging and growing up, reconciling with old loves and finding new ones.
In July of 2002, HarperCollins will publish Flight Lessons.Set in a small town on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Flight Lessons is the story of 30-something Anna Catalano who comes home, after a long self-exile, to help run the Bella Sorella, the family Italian restaurant.Once again the focus is family, both Anna's real one as well as the Bella Sorella's steamy, chaotic, metaphorical family.Sins are committed and forgiven, hearts broken and healed.Gaffney explores favorite themes in this book about food, family, and forgiveness.
Patricia Gaffney is currently at work on her fourth novel for HarperCollins.
媒体推荐 A jewel of a book and every facet sparkles. -- Nora Roberts
"Anyone who's ever raised a glass to toast her women friends will love this book..." -- Times-Picayune
"Compelling...breathtaking...unique." -- Washington Post Book World
"Rich, Lovely...An intimate portrayal of friendships through the eyes of four unforgettable women. I hated to put it down!" -- Michael Lee West, author of Crazy Ladies
"This ode to the friendships between women could easily become the northern version of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." -- Booklist
文摘
Emma
If half of all marriages end in divorce, how long does the average marriage last? This isn't a math problem; I'd really like to know. I bet it's less than nine and a half years. That's how long the Saving Graces have been going strong, and we're not even getting restless. We still talk, still notice things about each other, weight loss, haircuts, new boots. As far as I know, nobody's looking around for a younger, firmer member.
Truthfully, I never thought we'd last this long. I only joined because Rudy made me. The other three, Lee, Isabel, and--Joan? Joanne? She didn't last; moved to Detroit with her urologist boyfriend, and we didn't keep up--the other three didn't strike me at that first meeting as bosom buddy material, frankly. I thought Lee was bossy and Isabel was old--thirty-nine. Well, I'll be forty next year, enough said there, and Lee is bossy, but she can't help it because she's always right. She really is, and it's a tribute to her exceptional nature that we don't all loathe her for it.
The first meeting went badly. We had it at Isabel's house--this was back when she was still married to Gary. God, these people are straight, I remember thinking. Straight and rich, that's what really got me--but I'd just moved into a dank little basement apartment in Georgetown for eleven hundred a month because of the address, so I was a little touchy about money. Lee looked as if she'd just come from spa day at Neiman's. Plus she was single, still in graduate school, and teaching special ed. part-time--you know how much money there is in that--and yet she lived around the block from Isabel in snooty Chevy Chase, in a house she wasn't renting but owned. Naturally I had it in for these people.
All the way home I explained to Rudy, with much wit and sarcasm and disdain, what was wrong with everybody, and why I couldn't possibly join a women's group whose members owned electric hedge trimmers, wore Ellen Tracy, remembered Eisenhower, dated urologists. "Bu
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