Author: Jennifer Weiner
ISBN: 978-0-743294270

Click Here To Purchase Fly Away Home: A Novel 

This is a wonderful read:  Hysterically funny and sensitive, with a plot that includes heart-wrenching emotional moments and tender, loving care.
 
Sylvie Serfer met Richard Woodruff at Yale Law School.  She was a cutie, with wildly curly hair, big hips, and lots of opinions that she inherited from her mother, the judge.  Earlier, at Barnard College, she met Ceil, a girl who would become her lifelong friend.  Ceil had a pixie cut hairdo and a round sweet face.  "She arrived at the dorm with a trunk full of Fair Isle sweaters and pleated plaid skirts that she'd taken to the nearest consignment shop as soon as her parents' station wagon had pulled onto the West Side Highway.  She'd spent the hundred dollars she'd gotten to buy black leggings, black turtlenecks, a pair of fringed suede boots, a woven Mexican poncho, and an eighth of an ounce of excellent pot."  (Don’t you just love those lines?)  Believe it or not, Ceil became a drama major. 

…Back to Richard.  Decades after Law School, Sylvie had changed into the ideal politician's wife by altering her hair style, losing weight, and following her husband around from place to place tending to his every need.  Richard is now the Senior Senator from New York.  The couple has become the “perfect political family portrait.”  They have two daughters:  Lizzie, the youngest, is a recovering addict, but now seems to be under control; and, Diana, an emergency room physician who seems to have everything (a husband, a son…even the perfect home) but, in reality, is very unhappy.
 
While Sylvie is being driven home from one of her husband’s endless political functions, she gets a call from Ceil telling her that there is a story on CNN about Richard having an affair with one of his legislative aides.  It seems that Richard had taken this woman on vacation and gotten her a job in the Washington branch of the law firm where he used to work.  After this bombshell, Sylvie and her daughters are pulled into the wretched glare of publicity where their husband/father has thrown them.  Sylvie agrees to attend a press conference where Richard apologizes to the country, the state of New York, and last, of course, his wife and family.  Sylvie and her daughters are compelled to reconsider their lives and what they want to do to make their future better.  They all FLY AWAY to a summer house in Connecticut that is owned by Sylvie's family in order to regroup.
 
This novel is a great mixture of heartbreaking moments, and some really amusing situations.  Fly Away Home is a memorable story of a mother and her daughters who had grown apart, finally coming back together to re-discover the love and support they have for each other.

 Click Here To Purchase Fly Away Home: A Novel