After Her by Joyce Maynard

 “A little over thirty years ago, on a June day just before sunset – alone on a mountain In Marin County, California – a man came toward me with a length of piano wire stretched between his hands and the intention of ending my days. I was fourteen years old, and many others had already died at his hands. Ever since then, I have known what it is to look into a man’s eyes and believe his face is the last thing you will ever see.

I have my sister to thank that I am here to tell what happened that day. Two times, it was my sister who saved me, though I was not able to do the same for my sister.

This is our story.”

Wow – what a fantastic opening!! This opening of After Her by Joyce Maynard instantly drew me into the novel. I read through this novel in record speed and was entranced. Rachel and her sister Patty are the closest of sisters growing up in the 1970’s. Their beloved father left them and their mother for another woman. Their mother was never really able to cope after that and immersed herself in her books and basically left the girls to raise themselves.

In the summer of 1979, the girls are riveted by the story of the sunset strangler, a killer of women that is lurking in the mountains right behind their Marin County California home. Their father is the lead detective on the case and they suddenly find they have notoriety at school. When their father has trouble catching the killer, the two girls decide to help him on the case, thereby putting themselves in harms away.

The ending of this book took a quite different direction than I thought. The book was wonderfully written, but the ending seemed rather loose. This could be because the beginning of the book sets you up for one type of ending, but you get a different ending and I felt slightly cheated. This aside, I loved the mystery and suspense of the novel, but I also loved the story of the two sisters. I had a sister two years younger than myself and we grew up playing in the woods behind our home. It was the 1980’s rather than the 1970’s, but I could relate to much of the novel. Maynard revels in the freedom the two girls have and points out how it is better than today when children are so closely monitored. On one hand, I agree, but on the other hand, I admit I felt bad for the girls that they had no parent that watched their activities and cared at all. I don’t think that is a great childhood either.

Overall, even though the ending wasn’t what I expected, I loved the great writing, characters, and suspenseful story. I also enjoyed The Good Daughters by Maynard, she is a wonderful author.

Book Source: Advance Review Copy from William Morrow. Thank-you!

The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard

Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson are both born on the same day in a small rural hospital to two very different families. The Planks have run the same family farm for two hundred years. Edwin loves his life as a farmer and his stoic wife Connie is the perfect farmer’s wife. Together they have four daughters, with Ruth making the fifth daughter. The Dickerson family consists of Valerie, an artist, and George a writer/dreamer. Together they can’t hold a job down and struggle to make a living. They have one son, Ray, and their new daughter Dana. That doesn’t stop their optimism though as George spends his life striving to make it big.


The “birthday sisters” do not actually have much to do with each other, but they find their lives inexplicably linked together through time. They each find themselves the odd one out in their family with only Edwin able to understand their true selves.

There is a major twist in The Good Daughters that I had figured out very early in the novel. Although I knew the destination, I still greatly enjoyed the journey getting there. I thought the prose was beautiful and almost lyrical at times. I most of all relished seeing the journey of the two girls throughout their life from birth until approximately age sixty. I loved the story time frame with Ruth and Dana being born in 1950. Their experiences growing up were buffeted at times by historical events such as the JFK assassination, Woodstock, etc. and it was interesting seeing the history played out through two very different girls’ lives. I also enjoyed it as I found it relatable. Ruth and Dana would be about five years older than my own parents and their parents are my grandparents’ age. Many circumstances of the novel, especially of life on the Plank farm reminded me of my own family.

Ruth and Dana also had two very different love stories that were both moving in their own ways. I was especially moved by Dana’s story.

SPOILER ALERT


There was one plot point that did majorly annoy me. One of the girls is taken by her mother to get an abortion when she is 24 and it is made to seem that her mother made her do it. Come on, at 24 you should be making your own decisions. I can’t believe a woman at that age would let her mother dictate something like this, especially without any explanation on why the abortion was necessary. It was the only point in the book that rang false in an otherwise very realistic novel.

SPOILER END

Overall, The Good Daughters is an interesting, yet moving journey through the lives of two very different girls from 1950s to the present day. Read it for the snap shot of America and great personal stories, not for the plot twists.

I read The Good Daughters as part of the TLC Book Tours.  Please visit the rest of the stops on this fantastic tour!

Book Source: HarperCollins Publishers. Thank-you!