Everyone She Loved : A Novel

A wise and triumphant novel about four women who’ve come of age together only to discover that—when it comes to the essentials—life’s little instruction book will always need revising.

Penelope Cameron has convinced her husband and four closest friends to sign an outlandish pact. If she should die before her two daughters are eighteen, her husband will not remarry without the permission of Penelope’s sister and three college roommates. For years, this contract gathers dust until the unthinkable happens—a disaster that only lovable, worrisome Penelope could have predicted—and everyone she loved is left in a world without her.

With the help of Penelope’s friends, her husband and children slowly build new lives. But just when things start to come together, the fragile serenity they have gained is suddenly threatened from within, and the unbreakable bonds they share seem likely to dissolve after all. Entertaining and uplifting, Everyone She Loved explores the faith one woman placed in those she held dearest, the care she took to protect her family, the many ways in which romantic entanglements will confound and confuse even the most determined of planners, but above all, the abiding strength of friendship.