The Widow's Season

by Laura Brodie

Book Overview

A mesmerizing debut novel about love, grief, and the ghosts who show up where we least expect them. Sarah McConnell's husband had been dead for three months when she saw him in the grocery store. What... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425227650
• ISBN13: 9780425227657
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Kept Me Enthralled Till the End

I really liked this book. I know it has had some mixed reviews but here's my two cents. The main character, Sarah, (a 39 year old childless widow) sees her dead husband in a grocery store. She doesn't just see someone who looks like him, she sees him in his clothes looking at her. And so begins the story. Sarah is trying to come to terms with widowhood, especially at a young age. Top that with the fact that her husband's body has never been recovered after his suspected drowning accident. So, throughout the book, as Sarah encounters her dead husband, I found myself asking, "Is he really dead? Is he a ghost? Is it her imagination?" Throw in a very handsome, single and attentive brother-in-law, a cabin in the woods, and a widow support group. The story is wonderful as Sarah rediscovers herself and her purpose in life without her husband (or maybe with him...?). It kept me wanting to read more and try to figure out how it would end. The story was touching and romantic. Sarah feels like a real person. She is likable and I felt her grief (and sometimes lack of grief). Not being a widow myself, it's hard to understand how it would really feel but Laura Brodie does a great job giving us a glimpse in to the mind of this widow. I really liked the ending and found that it fit the flow of the story. This is a easy going book to read but interesting story line. Highly recommended reading.

How do you move on when the ghosts come with you?

By the middle of this wonderful book I was forcing myself not to read the last chapter to see where Brodie was going with this tale. Weaving reality and fantasy you find your self hoping and wondering and imagining an even larger tale. Sarah McConnell is in her late thirties and has been married for a little more then 15 years when her husband in supposedly killed in a kayaking accident. He body has never been recovered, but yet one day three months later she sees him in the grocery store. There he is across the isle from her. After a quick distraction she looks over again and he's gone. Not sure of what she saw or didn't see she returns home even more bewildered then before. Then the noises and bumps around the house begin, how can David be back, but on Halloween night he knocks on her door with quite a tale to tell. What is she to do. She can't tell anyone that she has seen him, the widow's club tells her that it takes a full season to get over a loss, but yet, David is there. She now must meet him clandestinely at their old cabin, she must move on with her life, but not leave David behind. By the end of this book you are just mesmerized by the story that Bodie tells. You hope, but you fear to hope, because sometimes it takes a season to heal.

Wonderful, intriguing read!

I was totally intrigued by this novel and am still turning it over in my mind 2 weeks after finishing it!

Widow or not?

My husband and I read "Widow's Season" at the same time and had different ideas about what was going on with Sarah's supposedly newly dead husband. My husband thought David faked his death to escape an increasingly strained marriage and to spy on his wife (and perhaps on his brother as well). I on the other hand was convinced David was either a ghost or a vivid figment of Sarah's imagination. First-time novelist Laura Brodie leaves you guessing until the end, and vividly captures both the agony and the opportunity of losing someone you love, or loved. The theme of seasons (from David's ghostly appearance on Halloween to a sort of resolution at Easter) adds both symbolism and a VERY interesting idea about how to celebrate Valentine's Day!

well, thanks a lot...

Just what I needed... Dead husband David staring through the window (just as Sarah is "coming out of widowhood" in a delicious and comforting affair with David's gorgeous brother Nate), showing up in the basement to root around for art supplies, and then taking up residence in their isolated cabin in the hills - allowing everyone to believe that he did, indeed, drown - while HE creates new space and the life he's always wanted. He invites Sarah to join him and she does, bringing him food, supplies, and even funds while he continues to make new art. Is Sarah widowed - or abandoned? Laura Brodie drove me crazy with this beautiful tale set in the hills and valleys of the Alleghenies. I could NOT "put this book down," and I could NOT stop talking about it when I was not reading it. I don't know how, or why, I chose this book... Applause, applause for this first novel!