NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In this superb new novel by the beloved author of Open House, Home Safe, and The Last Time I Saw You, four women venture into their pasts in order to shape their futures, fates, and fortunes.
Cecilia Ross is a motivational speaker who encourages others to change their lives for the better. Why can’t she take her own advice? Still reeling from the death of her best friend, and freshly aware of the need to live more fully now, Cece realizes that she has to make a move—all the portentous signs seem to point in that direction.
She downsizes her life, sells her suburban Minnesota home and lets go of many of her possessions. She moves into a beautiful old house in Saint Paul, complete with a garden, chef’s kitchen, and three housemates: Lise, the home’s owner and a divorced mother at odds with her twenty-year-old daughter; Joni, a top-notch sous chef at a first-rate restaurant with a grade A jerk of a boss; and Renie, the youngest and most mercurial of the group, who is trying to rectify a teenage mistake. These women embark on a journey together in an attempt to connect with parts of themselves long denied. For Cece, that means finding Dennis Halsinger. Despite being “the one who got away,” Dennis has never been far from Cece’s thoughts.
In this beautifully written novel, leaving home brings revelations, reunions, and unexpected turns that affirm the inner truths of women’s lives. “Maybe Freud didn’t know the answer to what women want, but Elizabeth Berg certainly does,” said USA Today. Elizabeth Berg has crafted a novel rich in understanding of women’s longings, loves, and abiding friendships, which weave together into a tapestry of fortunes that connects us all.
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Praise for Tapestry of Fortunes
“A testament to the power of female friendships . . . Berg strips her writing down to what is essential and takes an unflinching look at lifelong regrets. The characters . . . will settle in your heart.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Elizabeth Berg has carved out a place as one of America’s most beloved chroniclers of female friendship.”—Chicago Tribune
“Luminous . . . As always, her writing is spare and lyrical, filled with . . . elegant description and profound insight.”—Library Journal
“An incredibly uplifting and life-affirming story . . . Berg explores the themes of change and personal reinvention with exquisite phrasing, sharply-focused attention to detail, and boundless joy and heart.”—Bookreporter
Praise for Elizabeth Berg
“Truth rings forth clearly from every page. [Elizabeth] Berg captures the way women think—and especially the way they talk to other women—as well as any writer I can think of.”—The Charlotte Observer, about Talk Before Sleep
“Elizabeth Berg’s gift as a storyteller lies most powerfully in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday.”—The Boston Globe
“Berg’s writing is to literature what Chopin’s études are to music—measured, delicate, and impossible to walk away from until their completion. [Grade:] A+.”—Entertainment Weekly
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From the Publisher
Praise for Tapestry of Fortunes
“A testament to the power of female friendships . . . Berg strips her writing down to what is essential and takes an unflinching look at lifelong regrets. The characters . . . will settle in your heart.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Elizabeth Berg has carved out a place as one of America’s most beloved chroniclers of female friendship.”—Chicago Tribune
“Luminous . . . As always, her writing is spare and lyrical, filled with . . . elegant description and profound insight.”—Library Journal
“An incredibly uplifting and life-affirming story . . . Berg explores the themes of change and personal reinvention with exquisite phrasing, sharply-focused attention to detail, and boundless joy and heart.”—BookreporterPraise for Elizabeth Berg
“Truth rings forth clearly from every page. [Elizabeth] Berg captures the way women think—and especially the way they talk to other women—as well as any writer I can think of.”—The Charlotte Observer, about Talk Before Sleep
“Elizabeth Berg’s gift as a storyteller lies most powerfully in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday.”—The Boston Globe
“Berg’s writing is to literature what Chopin’s études are to music—measured, delicate, and impossible to walk away from until their completion. [Grade:] A+.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A writer whose luminous prose is likely to stay with you a long, long time.”—Chicago Tribune
“Berg could be creating a new genre. . . . [She] is especially wonderful at depicting the small revealing moments of women’s friendships, the offhand sharing of secrets in the grocery store.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Berg’s impeccable prose gives voice to that element in our psyche that enables us to cope with the impossible. . . . Berg writes on a higher plane.”—Booklist
“One of the most life-affirming writers around.”—The Miami Herald
“Berg has a gift for capturing the small, often sweet details of ordinary life.”—Newsday
Library Journal
Craving change, Cecilia Ross takes time off, disposes of her home, and moves into a grand old house in St. Paul with three roommates. The four women decide to take a road trip, one to connect with the daughter she gave up, another with a former husband; a professional chef wants to check out other restaurants. As for Cecilia, that unexpected letter from former heartthrob Dennis Helsinger has her sailing on the wind. Who better to tell this story than quintessential women's author Berg?
Kirkus Reviews
A motivational speaker struggles to follow her own advice after a close friend dies. Cecilia, successful self-help author and woman of a certain age--which she declines, on principle, to disclose--travels the nation inspiring others to be their best selves. However, since her best friend Penny died after a short illness, Cecilia herself is now adrift. Penny, her next-door neighbor in Minneapolis, had tried to persuade Cecilia to take a vacation and go globe-trotting with her. But Cecilia procrastinated, and now it is too late. Consulting a variety of fortunetelling devices, she sells her home--she has never married--and moves in with three other women, who are also at loose ends. The witty repartee among the four, and their interaction with their pet, an aging yellow lab named Riley, is the most enjoyable aspect of this otherwise predictable pastiche of time-worn truisms on loss and aging. The four (and Riley) soon leave domestic routine to traverse the heartland in search of lost opportunities. Cecilia intends to reconnect with globe-trotting heartthrob Dennis, with whom she lost touch after college. Her traveling companions, advice columnist Renie, family physician Lise and chef Joni, are seeking, respectively, a lost daughter, an ex-husband and culinary inspiration. (Riley is just hoping for lots of road-food leftovers.) The bromidic plot leaves no doubt as to the outcome for all four. Berg marshals sentimental subplots in support of her inspirational thesis: The wry voice of the departed Penny reminds Cecilia that time's winged chariot is hovering just overhead, the fiancee of a dying man in a hospice where Cecilia volunteers (that was Penny's deathbed wish) offers him a last hope, and Cecilia's dotty mother, an assisted living resident, is bent on getting married. However, the characterization, particularly of Cecilia, is too sketchy: A deeper, more fully articulated back story might have lent needed depth to our understanding of how Cecilia arrived at this juncture in her life. Berg fails to play to her strengths here.
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