ALL THAT IS SACRED

The spirit of a woman killed in a car crash guides her friends and family toward healing in Norman-Carbone’s novel.

When Lynn, a woman in her 30s, and her husband, Scott, set out for a weekend getaway to work on their marriage, a car crash on an icy road ends her life. Lynn’s spirit is stuck in limbo, watching her friends and family struggle in her absence. Scott builds a shrine to her in his room, and her young daughters, Emma and Olivia, begin to forget things about her. Her friends—Jules, Helene, Annie, and Riley—once an inseparable group since high school, drift apart due to secrets and resentments. Able to influence her loved ones as a spirit, Lynn encourages her friends to meet up at her family’s beach cottage on the one-year anniversary of her death to repair their bond and enable them to help Scott and the girls heal. As her friends argue and reminisce, Lynn learns things she never knew and starts to come to terms with her own life and death as her friends find closure. The story is more concerned with the relationships between Lynn and her loved ones than creative depictions of the afterlife (Lynn exists mostly in a shadowy replica of her home on Earth and can communicate with her loved ones more easily than she could in life). The emotional payoff of the story far outweighs the narrative conveniences used to make it happen. The linchpin of the novel is the women’s friend group—including the secrets that pulled them apart and the loyalty to Lynn that brings them back together (“This is what it feels like to be us, girls with a shared past. No matter the circumstances, we always make each other feel warm and cozy—just like home”). The dynamics among the women, both as a group and in separate pairs, are very well developed. The text captures the ways women feel the need to model perfection for each other and illustrates how covering up weaknesses allows them to fester. There is catharsis in the way each of the women, particularly Lynn, allows herself to be imperfect and in the healing that comes from that vulnerability.

A heartfelt, life-affirming novel tailor-made for readers who love stories of female friendship.