This is a trade paperback that Janny loaned to me. Berg's novels seem to celebrate civility and courteousness between people.
Betta's husband dies of liver cancer. She misses John and he was the love of her life. Their marriage seemed perfect. He had told her that she should drive west (they lived in Boston) and find a small town that she loves, and relocate.
She wants to open a shop called, 'WHAT WOMEN WANT'. She has been collecting interesting pieces most of her life.
She settles in Stewart, IL; fifty miles from Chicago. There is a real Steward, Illinois that is probably the town. Due west of Chicago and south of Rockford.
She buys a big Victorian home from Lydia. Lydia is a cantankerous old woman and Betta becomes friends with the realtor, Delores.
She also becomes friends with some much younger people.
And, she reconnects with her three closest friends. She hadn't seen them since college. John and Betta were a world onto themselves and this is probably why she lost connection with her friends.
From the book's page at Amazon:
"Betta Nolan moves to a small town after the death of her husband to try to begin anew. Pursuing a dream of a different kind of life, she is determined to find pleasure in her simply daily routines. Among those who help her in both expected and unexpected ways are the ten-year-old boy next door, three wild women friends from her college days, a twenty-year-old who is struggling to find his place in the world, and a handsome man who is ready for love."
From the book's page at Publishers Weekly:
"The familiar protagonist of Berg's 13th novel (after The Art of Mending ) is a Boston widow of several months, 55-year-old Betta Nolan, who fulfills her dying husband's dream of moving out to the Midwest and starting a new life. "It will give me peace to know that what you will do is exactly what we talked about," says John commandingly before dying of liver cancer; Betta, an author of children's books, sells their Beacon Hill brownstone and takes off, buying an oversized Victorian in the small town of Stewart, Ill., 49 miles from Chicago. Lonely, she finds herself tracking down three former college roommates from the late 1960s, Lorraine, Maddy and Susanna, whom she ditched once she met John. The women reappear one by one and help give her the courage to open a shop called What a Woman Wants (it'll sell "all different stuff that women loved. Beautiful things, but unusual too. Like antique birdcages with orchids growing in them"). Meanwhile, she begins to make friends in town, notably with attractive young handyman Matthew and natty oldster Tom Bartlett. Berg is a pro at putting together an affecting saga of interest to women of a certain age, yet here she seems to be writing in her sleep. There is little effort at cohesion—rather, a kind of serendipitous plot that goes every which way and a series of tentative, aborted romances. The impression readers will be left with is of a woman endlessly nurturing and rarely satisfied."
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