THE MIGHTY QUEENS OF FREEVILLE: A STORY OF SURPRISING SECOND CHANCES by AMY DICKINSON
I loved reading this book, so different from the heavy stuff I’ve been into lately. True, the content isn’t light weight, but it took me into a small town with the family, basically of sisters, providing a constant source of love and support – a place to return to for love and rejuvenation — where growing-up-and-school-friends remain in place. It reminded me of my own hometown of Forestville where I grew up feeling safe and believing that life was as constant and rewarding as one chose to make it. What a blessing it was to grow up in such a place.
Yet this is a story of personal courage, of mastering (mistressing?) the challenges of loss and abandonment while taking us into a broader geographic world. I loved the relationship between Amy and her mother, between Amy and her aunts, between Amy and her daughter.
I love the author’s writing style of lightness and humor, even when talking about personal tragedy and loss. Personally I liked delving into the tragedy of loss through divorce. Living where I do, so often there is table talk of partner loss through death, but little such compassionate understanding of the heartbreak of divorce.
Finally, as one might expect and hope for from an advice columnist, there are touches of serious contemplation of life. Consider this from the final pages.
Here I am in advanced middle age and I finally realize what it means to be an adult. To give with no possibility that I’ll be rewarded. I used to think that being a parent defined my adulthood. Mothering was the making of me. But emotionally, mothering is a little league undertaking: it’s nothing compared to trying to keep these wonderful women in my life – Knowing all the while that one day they will leave it.
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