The Good Daughters

The premise of THE GOOD DAUGHTERS is deceptively simple: Two baby girls are born on the same day in 1950 in the same small New Hampshire hospital. But they are born into families that could hardly have been less alike. And the echoes and aftershocks of this seemingly random occurrence will resonate through the lives of the girls and their families––in ways both prosaic and profound for decades.

Ruth is an artist and a romantic, with a rich and passionate imaginative life. Dana is a scientist and a realist, whose faith is firmly planted in what she can see or hear or touch. Yet these two very different women share the same struggle to make sense of their place in a world in which neither of them has ever felt she truly belonged. Told in the alternating voices of Ruth and Dana, THE GOOD DAUGHTERS follows these “birthday sisters” as they make their way through the decades, from the 1950s to the present. This is a chronicle of the unlikely ways the two women’s lives intersect––from childhood and adolescence to first loves, first sex, marriage, and parenthood; from the deaths of parents to divorce, the loss of home, and the loss of a beloved partner––until an unavoidable moment when a long-held secret from the past alters everything.

Moving from rural New Hampshire to the wilds of British Columbia to the ’70s Boston art school scene, THE GOOD DAUGHTERS is a story about the ties of home and family, the devastating force of failed love, and the healing power of forgiveness.

Once again, master storyteller, Joyce Maynard, has delivered an un-put-downable novel of domestic disturbance and fraught family relationships told in her inimitably clear, compelling style.

Also Recommended:
Labor Day
At Home in the World