This book was inspired by the author's real life experience caring for a terminally ill friend, Heidi Armitage. The story is about how family and friends rally around a vibrant young mother who is diagnosed with a rare complication following a long remission from breast cancer. Although she changed the details--and emphasizes that this is not "Heidi's story," the underlying themes of love and being there for others that Ms. Green experienced first hand as she saw her beloved friend through chemotherapy and coming to accept what turned out to be a fatal illness is authentic.Promises to Keep is about two sisters--one who is a thirty-something wanderer. She is an excellent chef but floats from job to job and inappropirate boyfriend to even more inappropriate boyfriend who often come in guise of younger, rocker dudes. She knows that they are not the man of her dreams but she is nonetheless attracted to them. Coincidentally, she decides to move to the New York suburbs, closer to her sister Callie, the consummate suburban housewife and her family, a bit before her sister is rediagnosed with the terminal illness.
I was especially moved at the end of the book by Callie's strength when she knows she is dying. As a mother myself, I found tears coming to my eyes as I thought of how I would feel if I knew I would not be around to see my children grow up. There is a paragraph or two describing Callie's thoughts about living long enough to see her daughter hit adolescence. She would then be old enough to get on without a mother.
As I read that, I thought, when is the right time to leave our children? Is there ever a right time?
What I like about many of Ms. Green's characters in previous books is that their lives are never black and white but rather lie in that 'grey' area. Like many people today, her characters struggle with their flaws--knowing that they exist and yet being unwilling to make immediate changes.
Karen Dydzuhn
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