Sarah Willis (1)

For Jennifer, a woman with a husband and teenaged daughter of her own, having her elderly mother move into her home is both a blessing and a curse. Jen, who once ran away from home--and stayed away for ten years--is determined to gain her mother's forgiveness for their estrangement. She wants more than anything to apologize to her mother for the child that she was, and wants nothing more than for her mother to apologize for the alcoholic mother that Rose turned into after her husband's show more death. In fact, however, forgiviness may not be forthcoming on her mother's part, due to the fact that Rose is suffering from Alzheimer's.

At times wonderfully lucid but more often than not living in the past, Rose wanders through a world where her husband is still alive, where her daughter Jennifer is still an angry, rebellious teen, where her son Peter still strives for achievement, and her youngest daughter, Betsy, sits quietly in the background. Rose wanders the corridors of her life as if it was a play, like one of the ones that her husband, Michael, once directed. She doesn't know who this woman is that keeps talking to her, asking her questions. She doesn't recognize Todd, Jennifer's husband, and often thinks her granddaughter, Jazz, is alternately her wayward daughter or her in-home nurse.

A GOOD DISTANCE is a poignant story of love and forgiveness, of family, and of learning to forgive yourself. Dealing with Rose's Alzheimer's takes its toll on everyone involved, and yet her moments of lucidity almost make the pain worse for her daughter. For Jennifer, this time together before she can allow herself to put her mother in a nursing home is a second chance at a mother-daughter relationship. For Rose, it's a time of anger and embarrassment, mixed in with love and disgust for those around her.

Sarah Willis has penned another wonderfully complicated, rich family drama, with heartfelt emotions and dialogue. A true winner. show less

Alice Marlowe is realizing, at the age of 48, that there's more to life than having a comfortable home, a fulfilling career, and parents and friends that love her. When she's awakened in the middle of the night by a wrong number, Alice 's world is tilted on its axis--and the tilting may very well save her sanity.

A little girl, barely six years old, has called Alice by mistake, missing a phone number by a couple of digits. Larissa, the girl on the other end of the line, is looking for her show more Auntie Teya--and her mother. As Alice struggles to awake from her deep sleep, she realizes that this child is at home alone, with no one to feed her, bathe her, clothe her, or watch out for her. Doing something she's never before done in all of her life--take the iniative to do something impulsive--Alice ends up leaving the comfort of her home and going to Larissa's apartment, ostensibly to wait for the child's mother to return.

What follows is an emotional rollercoaster so superbly written that I was unable to put the book down once I began reading. Alice is forced to call the police when Larissa's mother doesn't return after several hours. Soon the Department of Children and Family Services is involved, with all the red tape, runarounds, and rigamarole that one would expect from an agency who operates with only so much funding and so many hours in the day.

As Larissa is placed in temporary foster care, Alice realizes that she wants to become a foster parent herself, to take care of Larissa if and until her mother can get her back. The journey that follows is an emotional one--Larissa is resentful, hurt, and angry, as only a child can be; Alice is apalled to realize how hidden she has made herself from the world, and how prejudiced she appears to be; Michelle, Larissa's mother, is alternately sorry for her brief abandonment and intolerable of criticism.

THE SOUND OF US is a rich novel on so many levels. Alice is already dealing with the loss of her twin brother the previous year, and the fact that her parents are getting older. She realizes that although she loves her job, being an interpreter for the deaf, she can't rely on it to be the sole basis for a fulfilling life.

Kudos to Ms. Willis for such an emotionally moving book. This is the first book I've read by her, but I've now added all of her previous releases to my reading list. You won't be disappointed by picking up a copy of this magnificent story. show less

Sarah Willis writes beautifully. In this novel, Alice, a 48-year-old spinster, becomes foster mother to 6-year-old Larissa. Larissa's mother Michelle left her alone in the apartment for 19 hours, and the state removed Larissa from her home. Big themes in this novel: loss, growth, love, death. Thoroughly believable, flawed but likeable, characters move through a year in Alice's life. I could not put the book down.

One night in Cleveland, a wrong number connects a middle-aged interpreter for the deaf to a little black girl who has been alone for hours in an apartment. The woman applies for and obtains the position of foster mother for Larissa. An intriguing portait of the process of taking care of a child traumatized by being wrenched from familiar surroundings. More compelling still is the relationship between Alice, the foster mother, and Michelle, the biological mother. This is a clash of women from show more two different worlds. An excellent read. show less