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Between Sisters
Cover of Between Sisters
Between Sisters
A Novel
Borrow Borrow
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Bestselling author [Kristin] Hannah [brings] snap and a lot of warmth to a familiar lesson: that contentment comes from accepting each other’s flaws.”—People
Years ago, Meghann Dontess made a terrible choice that cost her everything, including the love of her sister, Claire. Now, Meghann is a highly successful attorney who doesn’t believe in intimacy—until she meets the one man who can change her mind. Claire Cavenaugh has fallen in love for the first time in her life. As her wedding day approaches, she prepares to face her strong-willed older sister. Reunited after more than two decades apart, these two women who believe they have nothing in common will try to become what they never were: a family. Tender, funny, bittersweet, and moving, Between Sisters skillfully explores the profound joys and sorrows shared by sisters, the mistakes made in the name of love, and the promise of redemption—all beautifully told by acclaimed author Kristin Hannah.
“Enormously entertaining . . . Hannah has a nice ear for dialogue and a knack for getting the reader inside the characters’ heads.”—The Seattle Times
“Hannah writes of love with compassion and conviction.”—Luanne Rice
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Bestselling author [Kristin] Hannah [brings] snap and a lot of warmth to a familiar lesson: that contentment comes from accepting each other’s flaws.”—People
Years ago, Meghann Dontess made a terrible choice that cost her everything, including the love of her sister, Claire. Now, Meghann is a highly successful attorney who doesn’t believe in intimacy—until she meets the one man who can change her mind. Claire Cavenaugh has fallen in love for the first time in her life. As her wedding day approaches, she prepares to face her strong-willed older sister. Reunited after more than two decades apart, these two women who believe they have nothing in common will try to become what they never were: a family. Tender, funny, bittersweet, and moving, Between Sisters skillfully explores the profound joys and sorrows shared by sisters, the mistakes made in the name of love, and the promise of redemption—all beautifully told by acclaimed author Kristin Hannah.
“Enormously entertaining . . . Hannah has a nice ear for dialogue and a knack for getting the reader inside the characters’ heads.”—The Seattle Times
“Hannah writes of love with compassion and conviction.”—Luanne Rice
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  • Chapter ONE CHAPTER ONE

    Dr. Bloom waited patiently for an answer.

    Meghann Dontess leaned back in her seat and studied her fingernails. It was time for a manicure. Past time. "I try not to feel too much, Harriet. You know that. I find it impedes my enjoyment of life."

    "Is that why you've seen me every week for four years? Because you enjoy your life so much?"

    "I wouldn't point that out if I were you. It doesn't say much for your psychiatric skills. It's entirely possible, you know, that I was perfectly normal when I met you and you're actually making me crazy."

    "You're using humor as a shield again."

    "You're giving me too much credit. That wasn't funny."

    Harriet didn't smile. "I rarely think you're funny."

    "There goes my dream of doing stand-up."

    "Let's talk about the day you and Claire were separated."

    Meghann shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Just when she needed a smart-ass response, her mind went blank. She knew what Harriet was poking around for, and Harriet knew she knew. If Meghann didn't answer, the question would simply be asked again. "Separated. A nice, clean word. Detached. I like it, but that subject is closed."

    "It's interesting that you maintain a relationship with your mother while distancing yourself from your sister."

    Meghann shrugged. "Mama's an actress. I'm a lawyer. We're comfortable with make-believe."

    "Meaning?"

    "Have you ever read one of her interviews?"

    "No."

    "She tells everyone that we lived this poor, pathetic-but-loving existence. We pretend it's the truth."

    "You were living in Bakersfield when the pathetic-but-loving pretense ended, right?"

    Meghann remained silent. Harriet had maneuvered her back to the painful subject like a rat through a maze.

    Harriet went on, "Claire was nine years old. She was missing several teeth, if I remember correctly, and she was having difficulties with math."

    "Don't," Meghann curled her fingers around the chair's sleek wooden arms.

    Harriet stared at her. Beneath the unruly black ledge of her eyebrows, her gaze was steady. Small round glasses magnified her eyes. "Don't back away, Meg. We're making progress."

    "Any more progress and I'll need an aid car. We should talk about my practice. That's why I come to you, you know. It's a pressure cooker down in Family Court these days. Yesterday, I had a deadbeat dad drive up in a Ferrari and then swear he was flat broke. The shithead. Didn't want to pay for his daughter's tuition. Too bad for him I videotaped his arrival."

    "Why do you keep paying me if you don't want to discuss the root of your problems?"

    "I have issues, not problems. And there's no point in poking around in the past. I was sixteen when all that happened. Now, I'm a whopping forty-two. It's time to move on. I did the right thing. It doesn't matter anymore."

    "Then why do you still have the nightmare?"

    She fiddled with the silver David Yurman bracelet on her wrist. "I have nightmares about spiders who wear Oakley sunglasses, too. But you never ask about that. Oh, and last week, I dreamed I was trapped in a glass room that had a floor made of bacon. I could hear people crying, but I couldn't find the key. You want to talk about that one?"

    "A feeling of isolation. An awareness that people are upset by your actions, or missing you. Okay, let's talk about that dream. Who is...

About the Author-
  • Kristin Hannah is the bestselling author of On Mystic Lake, Angel Falls, Summer Island, and Distant Shores. She lives with her husband and son in the Pacific Northwest.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    April 14, 2003
    Differences between siblings couldn't be more extreme than they are in this overwrought feel-good novel by Hannah (Distant Shores), a tale about two estranged sisters. Meghann Dontess is a hotshot, well-to-do Seattle divorce lawyer in her 30s, entirely focused on her career. Her younger sister, Claire Cavenaugh, a single mom living in a backwater town in the Pacific Northwest, takes care of her five-year-old daughter and helps her father run his low-key lakeside resort. The half-sisters were raised by a neglectful mother, who finally abandoned them for Hollywood when she won a starring role in a science fiction series. Meghann was 16 and Claire was nine; Meghann had already essentially raised Claire herself, and after their mother left, she tracked down Claire's biological father. Sam Cavenaugh was thrilled to be reunited with Claire, but Meghann suddenly found herself motherless and sisterless all at once, and numbed the pain by pouring herself into school, college and career. Now she's horrified because Claire has recklessly fallen in love with a country singer whom she's about to marry. Their absentee mom suddenly steps in to get him a recording contract, but before there can be a happy mother-daughter reunion, Claire is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Only Meghann, with her worldly connections, can come to the rescue. The melodramatic plot is something of a stretch, especially when Hannah ties it all together with a happy ending. Some devoted fans will enjoy the sisterly bonding, but the broad-strokes characters will disappoint more demanding readers of women's fiction. (Apr. 15)Forecast:Hannah has a solid track record, as indicated by Ballantine's 125,000 first printing and one-day laydown, and the publisher's creative marketing campaign includes a free book offer for the sisters of online reviewers. But readers may not settle indefinitely for Hannah's subpar storytelling. Author tour.

  • Library Journal

    April 15, 2003
    Sisters Claire and Meghann, once close as children, are now in their mid-thirties and have a distant and strained relationship. Meghann is a successful divorce attorney, Claire is managing a somewhat run-down combination resort motel, and neither can understand or appreciate the choices the other has made. When Meghann is violently threatened by the husband of a client, she is forced by her law partner to take a long-overdue vacation. At a loss for what to do, she reluctantly decides to visit Claire and discovers that her sister is headed for the altar with a man she feels is not a good marriage prospect. The two sisters want to be close again, but every word and gesture seems only to drive them further apart. Eventually, the two women must face a life-threatening crisis together, testing their resolve as sisters. While loaded with improbable coincidences and a melodramatic story line, Hannah's latest work (like her other books, e.g., Distant Shores) is rich in the details and nuances of family relationships. Readers who enjoy Luanne Rice or Susan Wilson will certainly be pleased to discover Hannah. Essential for most popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/03.]-Margaret Hanes, Sterling Heights P.L., MI

    Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Booklist

    March 15, 2003
    Hannah returns to a minor character, Meghann, from " Distant Shores" [BKL My 1 02], and explores her life in-depth as she and her sister confront the past in order to have a better future relationship. They share a bitter childhood and find it difficult to trust each other, but for Meghann it goes deeper as her inability to trust anyone leads to a dangerously promiscuous lifestyle. Both sisters feel betrayed by the other, and now lead very different lives. Meghann, a shark of a Seattle divorce attorney, has been in therapy for years. Claire leads a simple, small-town life, and now tells her sister that she's getting married. Meghann initially tries to save her sister from what she believes will be a disaster since she doesn't believe in love, only in prenups, but eventually she adopts a more positive attitude and takes the first step toward healing the rift. Then Joe arrives, a wanderer with his own issues. Change comes gradually but with such finesse that the reader will enter the characters' relationships and make them her own as Hannah transcends the mundane in this gratifying, five-hankie story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

  • People "Bestselling author Hannah writes witty dialogue . . . bringing snap and a lot of warmth to a familiar lesson: that contentment comes from accepting each other's flaws."
  • The Seattle Times "ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINING . . . Hannah has a nice ear for dialogue and a knack for getting the reader inside the characters' heads."
  • LUANNE RICE, author of The Secret Hour "[Hannah] writes of love with compassion and conviction."
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A Novel
Kristin Hannah
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