For my daughters

Review by Booklist Review

When Virginia St. Clair was a young married woman, she fell in love with the gardener of her vacation house in Maine. At the end of the summer, she chose duty to her husband over love and emotionally estranged herself from everyone who entered her life. Her three daughters, born after that summer, suffered the most. Now, at 70, Virginia decides to correct her mistakes. She purchases her former vacation home in Maine and invites her daughters to join her there. Caroline leaves her law practice, Annette's family encourage her to make the trip, and Leah abandons the Washington social scene. When the three women arrive, they find out Virginia will be a few days late, and they must face their problems with each other and with their personal lives. The revelation of their emotionless mother's passionate past rocks the foundations of the sisters' beliefs about their family and enables them to heal the emotional scars of childhood and face the future with the men they love. ~--Melanie Duncan

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bestselling romance author Delinsky ( Suddenly ) again proves herself an excellent storyteller in her hardcover debut, a thoroughly enjoyable weeper in which passion and family bonds are both victorious. Wealthy, widowed Philadelphia socialite Ginny St. Clair has always been cool and distant to her three daughters. The summer of her 70th birthday, she abruptly invites all of her offspring to help her settle into a mansion on the rocky Maine coast. Annette, the suffocatingly good mother of five; hard-edged Caroline, a hotshot Chicago lawyer; and Leah, the twice-divorced youngest sibling, arrive at the estate, each aghast to find the others--but their mother, by design, is not there. Though the three grimly assume battle positions, enforced proximity fosters grudging respect and finally love. For Leah, there's also a scalding affair with groundskeeper Jesse Cray, a wild echo of a romance that had flared half a century earlier between a gardener and the mistress of the house. Predictably, that woman was Ginny, who chose duty over love. Readers will enjoy the tart barbs flung by siblings whose animosities are well rendered, as well as the sparks that fly between Jesse and Leah. Clinically neat solutions to various problems and a few whacking credibility lapses hardly dent the novel's appeal. 100,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; audio to HarperAudio; author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Delinsky, a popular and prolific author of Harlequin romances, makes an impressive hardcover debut with this novel. Three sisters, longtime rivals, are reunited by the mother from whom all are estranged. Focusing on each woman in turn, Delinsky skillfully brings out the pain, insecurity, and hope each harbors. Although there are men in their lives, the real focus is on the sisters, their relationships with one another and their mother, and a summer retreat that brings self-discovery and resolution to unresolved conflicts. Delinsky develops her characters well and creates a strong sense of place with beautiful, evocative descriptions of the landscapes. This bittersweet story should be a popular addition to modern fiction collections.-Barbara E. Kemp, Library Consultant, Reston, Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Delinsky's first hardcover squeezes a novel out of short-story material about three sisters whose manipulative mother stages an unorthodox family reunion. When she was 27, Ginny St. Clair had an affair with Will Cray, the gardener at Star's End, the home she and her husband rented one summer in Maine. Now 70, she has purchased Star's End and summons her three daughters, who have little to do with one another, to spend two weeks at the house--without telling them that she won't be there. Caroline, obsessive about her work as a lawyer, is romantically linked with Ben Hammer, an artist who maintains a balanced view of his life. Annette, obsessive about her role as wife and mother (and basically a retread of a character in last year's Suddenly), is married to Jean-Paul Maxime, a neurosurgeon who maintains a balanced view of his life. (Catching the offensive pattern here?) Finally there is Leah, a twice-divorced Washington, DC, socialite, with an insignificant life and no man at all. This means that she is free to meet Will's son Jesse Cray, the current gardener at Star's End, and reenact her mother's romance of decades ago, this time with the requisite happy ending. Delinsky, who has offered adequate portrayals of small-town New Englanders in previous works, disappoints even in this respect. Plain old locals- -those who are not transplants from major cities, or world travelers (like Jesse), or artists who sell ``to kings...and movie stars''--are little more than vaudeville-style clowns here. As the story putters along, the sisters, despite years of mutual indifference, become great friends. Meanwhile, dipping into Ginny's old romance, the story sugarcoats the self-centeredness she displays up through her own melodramatic return to Star's End. Bypass this and dig out one of Delinksy's old paperbacks. (First printing of 100,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour)

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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For My Daughters Chapter One The News Wasn't Good. Caroline St. Clair read the verdict on the jurors' faces well before it was passed to the judge. None of the twelve could look at her. Her client had been found guilty. The rational part of her knew it was for the best. The man had kidnapped his ex-wife, held her hostage for three days, and repeatedly raped her. A respected state legislator with an otherwise spotless record, he would serve his term in the relative comfort of a federal prison, receive the psychiatric help he needed, and be paroled while he was still young enough to start again. In some regards an acquittal, which would have tossed him to the media and others bent on exploitation at a time when he was as bruised as his ex-wife, would have been more cruel. But for Caroline each win was crucial. Wins generated renown, renown generated new cases, and new cases fattened the bottom line that was the obsession of the predominantly male partnership of Holten, Wills, and Duluth. Like so many of its kind, it had spent the better part of two decades in overextension, but while other firms folded, Holten, Wills, and Duluth clung to solvency. The cost was a fixation on cutting dead weight, limiting perks, and streamlining operations -- and a preoccupation with accounts receivable. Caroline was one of the newer and, even at forty, younger partners. The future of the firm rested on her shoulders, lectured her older colleagues in the same breath that they grilled her on her billable hours. They didn't like sharing the wealth. Worse, they didn't like women. Caroline had to work twice as hard and be twice as good for the same recognition. She had to be more clever in the manipulation of legal theory, more aggressive negotiating with prosecutors, more effective with juries. She had badly, badly needed this win. "Tough break," said one of her fellow junior partners from the door of her office. "The press opportunities would have been good, what with your man's political connections. Now you get exposure for a loss." Caroline shot him a look that might have been more stern had he been anyone else. But she and Doug had joined the firm at the same time, both lateral appointees, and though he had been named partner two years before her, she hadn't held it against him. She couldn't afford to. He was her strongest ally in the firm. "Thanks," she drawled. "I needed that." "Sorry. But it is true." "And you think that that thought didn't keep me awake for more than a minute or two last night?" she asked, tapping the desktop with her forefinger, then her pinkie. "I knew the potential for this case when I took it. I thought we had a shot at winning." "Proving insanity is tough." "But aside from this one aberration John Baretta has lived an exemplary life," she argued, as she had more eloquently and in greater depth to the jury. "I thought that would count for something." "Then you do believe he was temporarily insane?" Caroline had had to believe it. That was the only way she could present an effective defense. With the trial behind her now, though, what would have been, "Definitely!" became, "Arguably." Her fingers kept up their alternating beat. "The man was crazy about his wife. He couldn't accept it when she left him. But he has no history of violence. He's ashamed and apologetic. He isn't a danger to society. He needs therapy. That's all." "And you need a cigarette." She stilled her hand. "You bet, but I won't have one. I'm not going through withdrawal again, and I'm not doing anything that'll make me sick. Just think of what the firm would do to me then." She sputtered out a breath. "My friends don't understand. They think that making partner guarantees something, like if I were to become pregnant tomorrow the firm would throw me a shower. They'd throw me out, is what they'd do. They'd find a way to get around the issue of discrimination and toss me out on my tail." She sighed, feeling suddenly tired. "It's so fragile, this thing we call a partnership, this thing we call a career. Is it worth it in the end?" "Beats me. But what else can we do?" "I don't know. But something's wrong, Doug. I'm feeling worse for myself for losing a case than I do for my client, and he's the one who'll be doing the time. My values have gotten messed up. All of ours have." The words had barely left her mouth when a second face appeared at the door. This one belonged to one of the senior partners. "You allowed too many women on the jury," was his assessment. "They sided with the victim." Doug slipped away just as Caroline said, "Gender isn't grounds for exclusion." "You should have found a way to get them off," he answered and continued on down the hall. She had barely begun to think up a response when another partner appeared. "You shouldn't have let him take the stand. He was looking piteous up to that point. Once he started talking, he sounded slick." "I thought he sounded sincere." "The jury didn't," came the chiding reply. "We can all be brilliant tacticians after the fact," Caroline reasoned, "but the truth is that none of us knows why the jury reached the decision it did." She was brooding about that moments later when yet another partner stopped by with as much encouragement as she would get. "Put this behind you, Caroline. You need a victory. Take a look at your caseload, pick a good one, and clobber the sucker." For My Daughters . Copyright © by Barbara Delinsky. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from For My Daughters by Barbara Delinsky All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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