Mothers and Daughters...and Fathers, Too

Joyce Maynard has written another winner. Her novel The Good Daughters features two families whose lives interact in surprising ways. The Planks are farmers, living and working the land on a New Hampshire farm that has been in their family for generations. The Dickersons are more of a fly-by-night family, who drift from place to place depending on their moods, dreams, and the next big idea. We learn at the beginning of the novel that Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson were born on the same day in the same hospital, so Ruth Plank's mother Connie calls them "birthday sisters." She makes sure that the families stay in touch after the Dickersons move away, and at least once a year drags her family to visit the Dickersons wherever they currently have taken up lodging. This is a strange thing for Ruth and Dana, who don't have much in common and don't care much about each other at all. In alternating chapters, we hear from Ruth and Dana as they live their separate and different lives, and see how the strands that weave their families together are tangled and significant. Maynard is a sensitive, smart writer, and provides multidimensional characters and beautiful descriptions of the landscape in which all of the characters live. The result is a wonderful book. Read it.