I’m excited to announce our February book club selection: Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives by Becky Aikman will change how we look at death of a spouse and widowhood. As a young widow, Becky was kicked out of her first widow support group. So what does she do? She formed her own widow support group, but with a twist.
In her forties – a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role – Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world. In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas. Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.
Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.
The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen. They share emotional peaks and valleys – dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves – while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down. Through it all runs the story of Aikman’s own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again. In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, Saturday Night Widows is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize.
Join us on February 14 when our book club members discuss Saturday Night Widows. Becky will be joining us for a Q&A as well. If you don’t currently subscribe to the site, do it now so you don’t miss any of our posts.
For more about the book, take a look at the book trailer above. You can follow author Becky Aikman on her Facebook page.
Don’t forget to grab your own copy of Saturday Night Widows!
Have you entered to win 1 of 2 copies of Quiet by Susan Cain?
I hope you enjoy this one, I really did!