Search - Good Harbor

Nice, easy book about two Jewish women who become friends while walking on the beach. Good book about female friendship.

Wonderful story about the healing powers of friendship between women.

Good Harbor is a story about two women who are dealing with challenges that cause them to reassess their lives, their choices, and even their femininity during a period of about a year. One, the elder, deals with breast cancer and aging; she also continues to confront the grief and loss she and her husband share, but deal differently with, from the senseless and accidental death many years earlier of a beloved young child.

The younger woman is coming to a different type of watershed in her life, as she assesses her professional dreams, her marriage, and whether she is losing touch with her adolescent daughter, whose personality is very different from hers.

The two women become friends when the younger moves into a house in Good Harbor, MA, where the older woman has lived for years and has very deep roots. The friendship comes at a time when both women need to reexplore their lives with someone who hasn't already "typed" them based on a shared history or set of expectations.

Diamant does an excellent job of exploring the lives of these women, and she is sympathetic in her portrayals of their husbands and children. It is written very differently from and is not, for me, as wonderful as her novel The Red Tent, but it is a nice read.