February 15, 2004
How a family on an apparently even keel is suddenly thrown into turmoil by the death of one of its members is the crux of Campbell's second engaging novel. Jack and Lana Porter run a thriving nursery business, and their two teenage daughters seem to be weathering the usual problems of cliques and fickle friends. Then Jack dies and Lana loses interest in everything, including her daughters. By the time she pulls out of her maelstrom, adopted daughter Micki is skipping school and barely coping with rejection by a high-school sorority, and Beth, 15, has dropped both her friends and the basketball team in favor of a pot-smoking newcomer who lives by herself in a downtown condo. Thrown into the quagmire that has become Lana's life is a sister who suddenly confides her husband's longtime abuse, and the unexpected appearance of Micki's birth father. Staunch friends in Lana's "run and read" group and a year's worth of family therapy sessions turn things around as Campbell brings her second paean to the power of female friendship to a tidy conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)