It All Comes Down To This by Therese Anne Fowler

 

Marti Geller is dying.  She's had a long, happy life so she's not that sad and she's ready to be reunited with her husband who preceded her.  Her main regret is leaving her three daughters.  She thinks none of them are as happy as they should be and she suspects they are no longer as close as she would wish.  She plans her will to try to remedy that.

Marti's instinct about her daughters is right.  Becky, or Beck, is the eldest.  She is a freelance journalist but it's never been more than a part time occupation as she preferred making a home and raising her children.  Lately, with the children grown, she realizes her marriage is just one of friendship and she even suspects that her husband might be gay and hiding it.  Clare is a pediatric cardiologist and has just gone through a divorce caused her confession to her husband that she is hopelessly in love with another man, a man she can't have.  Sophie seems like a successful jetsetter with an art galley job but in reality she is thousands of dollars in debt and has been homeless for years, jumping from one housesitting job to another and doing errands and jobs for rich people.  The sisters rarely talk and when they do it never reaches the realm of disclosures.

The family has had a lake cottage in Maine and all the girls have fond memories of summers there.  But Marti declares in her will that the cottage is to be sold.  Sophie is glad as she needs the money.  Beck is distraught as she had thought she might use it as a second home while she worked on a novel and decided what to do about her marriage.  Clare is indifferent but probably more on the side of selling.  There is even a potential buyer, a man who also summered there as a teenager and who has returned to the area after some personal issues of his own. 

Therese Anne Fowler started her literary career later than most.  She had already been married and was the mother of two sons when she went through a divorce and decided she needed to go back to the university and get some credentials for a career.  She thought about sociology and law but ended up in North Carolina State University's MFA degree program.  Her first couple of novels didn't get much buzz but she broke out with the publication of Z, Zelda Fitzgerald, and her marriage to Scott Fitzgerald.  Since then her novels have been bestsellers.  She specializes in everyday issues and problems and how people work through them.  This novel is about relationships, both in birth families and later with love interests.  I listened to this novel and the narrator did a great job of bringing the women and their issues to light and resolution.  This book is recommended for readers of women's fiction.