Sweet Hollow Women by Holly Tierney-Bedord (Review by Lara Ferguson)
Family can be the best thing and the worst; it is the thing we love to hate as well as the thing that we often count on to get us to the other side of trouble. It’s no different for Carasine Busey and when her family decides to move to the city, away from the rural life she has always known, she is heart-broken, but not surprised. After all, they are a family that life just happens to, disappointment is normal.
Sweet Hollow Women is a story of a young woman’s discovering of herself and realizing that she might be able to break from the destructive cycle that her mother perpetuates and make a better way. Holly Tierney-Bedford tells the story of several generations simultaneously, moving from one to another and back again in an effort to help us understand how the cycle began without really spelling out the connections between the women. At times the path she creates is twisty and unclear, but at the end of the book, when all the pieces come together, there is an “aha” moment when it all makes sense, you understand who all the players are and you are glad you made the journey.
In Sweet Hollow Women, we are reminded not only how fragile family relationships can be, but also how it may only take one gesture to begin changing a life.