The Women's Center

Who believes, follows

Who hopes, leads

Who loves, receives

Who forgives, heals

Award-winning journalist Michele Fitzpatrick's engaging debut novel introduces four unlikely heroines in their fifties who navigate extraordinary challenges as ordinary people do: rarely smoothly, often treading water, sometimes barely afloat.

Ruth Fortune is a trustworthy CEO who trusts no one, ever. Artist Pat Conelli considers her seven children her masterpieces but wonders where she mislaid herself. June Magee is a master craftswoman who can't craft a single love match. And Diane Jonasen? Her news career is solid. Her sanity? Not so much.

They have reunited thirty-five years after they were students at Shorelake College for Women to fulfill a promise to the woman who was their college president. They set out to transform an aging Chicago mansion into a twenty-first-century women's center, unaware the process will transform them.

What can you do when loss obliterates your faith, duty blurs hope, self-doubt trumps love or guilt denies you forgiveness? Flawed, funny, occasionally furious, they are about to find out.