Stuff
Product Details
Atria, June 2009
Hardcover, 432 pages
ISBN-10: 1416590668
ISBN-13: 9781416590668
Description
A wise and triumphant novel about 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 has convinced her husband and four closest friends to sign an outlandish pact. If she 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—a disaster that only lovable, worrisome Penelope could have predicted—and everyone she loved is left in a world without her. With the help of Penelope’s friends, her husband and children slowly build 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. Entertaining and uplifting, Everyone She Loved explores the faith one woman placed in those she held dearest, the care she took to protect her family, the many ways in which romantic entanglements will confound and confuse even the most determined of planners, but above all, the abiding strength of friendship.
"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. Read this book, then pass it on to your dearest friend. She'll thank you."
-- Joshilyn Jackson, bestselling author of Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia
"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. 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
"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, bestselling 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."
-- Masha Hamilton, The Distance Between Us, The Camel Bookmobile, 31 Hours
"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
Daily Dispatch, May 16, 2009
...I read court (legal) depositions. Jon: Novels by two friends of mine The Madam by Juliana Baggott, and Everyone She Loved by Sheila Curran Q: Where do you write? Bill: Generally in my study in my home in Knoxville (Tennessee). Jon: ...
