Nancy Jensen

”Whatever we carry inside us shapes everyone we touch.”

The Sisters, young teens growing up in 1920s Kentucky, are suddenly separated. Hurried decisions and misunderstandings hem them in to lives they would not have chosen. Yet time marches on, and they go on to have daughters and grand-daughters of their own, each of them coming in to her own kind of strength, though none of them really understanding the other.

”They had all been raised up on secrets, things never expressed but linked show more through time to all the other members. . . . the tangled secrets and what they had wrought.”

Reading this story was to be carried along on a river of pain and poignancy, hoping for something around the next bend, not finding it, and still being swept along with hope filling your sail. Making something with what you have - it’s all any of us can do. Watching these women make their lives was an emotional reading experience. The characters, setting and story are full and nuanced; a well written first novel. show less

In the early 1920's, sisters Mabel and Bertie Fischer are left alone with their cruel step-father, Jim Butcher, after their mother dies in childbirth. As the girls became teenagers, Butcher's eyes fell on the beautiful Mabel who endured his advances to keep him away from her younger sister. On the day of Bertie's 8th grade graduation, Mabel and Bertie's boyfriend Wallace, devised an elaborate plan to escape the clutches of Jim Butcher. Unfortunately, the plan went awry, separating the show more sisters from one another due to a horrible misunderstanding. Thus begins a multi-generational story of estrangements between mothers and daughters, between sisters, and the search for love that should be so easy to grasp but is always just out of reach.

Bertie marries a hardworking man named Hans and has two daughters, Alma and Rainey. Alma is an excellent student and craves a life far removed from the poverty-stricken home in which she grew up. It seems her prayers are answered when she marries Gordon, a doctor and son of wealthy parents but although she has respect, dignity and the envy of many women, her marriage is a shell and her son, Milton, is exactly like his cold father. Rainey impulsively marries Carl at age 18 when she becomes pregnant with her first child, Lynn, but leaves him just as impulsively when she learns a secret that Carl has tried to hide from everyone. A short affair with another man produces Rainey's second child, Grace. Alma and Rainey, so different from one another, are never close and the next generation of Lynn and Grace fare no better in the sisterly love department.

Mabel became an accomplished photographer, first working for a newspaper and then working on her own. She unofficially adopted a young girl named Daisy who was in the same unfortunate position Mabel had been in as a young girl. Through the years Mabel had tried to contact Bertie but Bertie refused to read any of her letters and burned them when she received them. Hoping to put an end to any communication she scribbles "deceased" on the last envelope and returns it to Mabel. Although Mabel believes that Bertie herself might have written the words, she accepts the estrangement as permanent.

This is a difficult book to rate as I do like Jensen's writing quite a bit. The chapters are short, each focusing on one or another of the female characters. For the most part the characters are quite well drawn but Mabel's daughter and granddaughter are lost in the stories of Bertie's family. I kept hoping that somewhere through the years one of these women would have a happy life and be able to turn to her sister or mother and say "I love you". It is a very interesting story but not a satisfying one. show less

This novel covers a lot of ground, telling the story of the Fischer sisters, Mabel and Bertie, beginning in 1927, and ending in 2007. It is a tragic story, full of violence, sacrifice, good intentions and misunderstandings. Mabel does her best to protect her younger sister Bertie from their abusive stepfather after their mother dies in childbirth. Things don't go as planned, and Mabel and Bertie end up estranged.

What follows are their individual stories: marriages, pregnancies, raising show more children, building careers. Mabel and Bertie's stories are interesting, but I do wish we had seen more of Mabel and her daughter Daisy's lives. They seem to have gotten shorter shrift than Bertie and her daughters and granddaughters. Bertie becomes closed-off after believing her sister abandoned her, and although she finds the love of a good man, she is never really happy. Her character is reminiscent of Elizabeth's Stout's Olive Kitteridge, and fans of that book will like The Sisters.

The theme of the book is that you really don't know what has happened in someone's life that makes her the person she becomes. Bertie says, "Something can happen to change your life so sudden, you can't ever get over it fast enough. And so you do things that you wouldn't have ever thought of doing. Maybe hurt other people. And that changes things for them, too, all in a line". Bertie compares what happened to her the same thing as going through a war. What she doesn't know is that Mabel ended up becoming famous for photographing soldiers before going to war and upon their return, so the war theme applies to both of them.

I do think that this book makes you empathetic to people in your life; you realize that you don't know everything that has happened to a person that affects her. Many people who read this book may come to the conclusion that their parents did the best job they could, as children in the book eventually learn. Mothers hurt their children, unintentionally or not, and they in turn hurt their children. I think the author believes that it is time to forgive and move on to break the chain of hurt.

The Sisters is sad book, and I find violence against children and women hard to read. There are a few scenes that will cause you to gasp. If you are depressed, this book may make that worse, but if you want to learn about the human condition, this is an emotionally cathartic novel. show less

The Sisters is the debut novel by Nancy Jensen, and it explores the relationships of four generations of sisters during the 20th century. Each sister has her own story - often one of disfunction and abuse - which, when combined with the other tales, resulted in a novel of great sadness.

The stories begin with Mabel and Bertie, sisters who live in a small town in Kentucky. Mabel is the oldest and prettiest, but she's sexually abused by her stepfather. Bertie is young and naive - but has a show more glimmer of hope in her future: a romantic relationship with a local boy, Wallace. Then, a certain turn of events occurs - a misunderstanding of sorts - and the sisters are forever separated, doomed to live lives of bitterness and lost hope.

The remaining stories are of Mabel and Bertie's daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters. Like a snowball effect, each story gets progressively more grim. The women endure abuse and promiscuity. They seem, in a word, hopeless. To say The Sisters was a bleak novel would be an understatement.

The shining star of The Sisters is the writer. Nancy Jensen is very talented, creating real-to-life characters and horrid circumstances that often turned my stomach. Yes, I wish there were more silver linings in this book, but even I realize that some women's lives are not pictures of happiness. It's tragic to see it generation after generation.

Unfortunately for me, I read The Sisters during Christmastime, so I was never in the correct mindset for such a depressing, but well-written book. If you decide to read this book, be prepared for a grim ride. I hope Jensen picks lighter fare for her next book. show less