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Sophie Stanton is newly widowed. Her husband, Ethan, died of
cancer, and Sophie wants desperately to be able to handle widowhood as gracefully as her
mother-in-law, Marion, who was so collected and always in take-charge mode. So Sophie
joins a support group to get counseling and help coping with the stages of the grieving
process—though she prefers her method of self-medicating with ice cream for
breakfast.
Unable to cope at work, Sophie is constantly under surveillance
by her boss. She’s not meeting her deadlines, and her quality of work has declined.
Understanding the stress she’s under, her boss cuts her a lot of slack until Sophie does
the unthinkable by showing up for a meeting in her bathrobe and bunny slippers,
over-dosed on antidepressants. She’s then given an unpaid leave of absence and told
there will be a job for her when she returns…just not in her position as corporate
manager.
Marion, the ever-in-charge mother-in-law, decides it’s time for
Sophie to get rid of Ethan’s things, so she spends a day boxing up all of his belongings,
much to Sophie’s dismay. Before going home, Marion arranges for the boxes to be picked
up the next day. But when the truck arrives, Sophie tells the movers to load all of her
living room furniture into the truck and take it away…and the boxes remain in the
garage.
Instead of returning to her job, Sophie decides to move to Ashland
to be near her best friend, Ruth. She sells her house and drives her car with a trailer
attached to Ashland. There, she joins a support group suggested by her former grief
counselor and tries to get on with her life.
Before long, she finds
herself responsible for a thirteen-year-old girl who cuts herself to cope with her own
pain and who’s fascinated with fire. She becomes involved with an actor who makes her
feel emotions she isn’t ready to deal with. And she starts her own business. Although
the roads to these eventualities are not in the least bit smooth, they make this book one
of the funniest novels about grief I’ve read.
Lolly Winston has written
this book with humor, compassion, and deeply-expressed emotion…something you’ll feel as
you laugh and cry your way through the pages of Good Grief.
