The Girls of Tonsil Lake by Liz Flaherty

The Girls of Tonsil Lake

by Liz Flaherty

Amazon: https://a.co/d/1AF21xt 

 Books2Read: https://books2read.com/u/bxGQQk

The Girls of Tonsil Lake  

I don’t know where the title came from, but one day I typed The Girls of Tonsil Lake in the header part of a manuscript page and away I went. I clarified in the book that whoever named the lake thought it looked like a tonsil. In retrospect, that explanation doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but it was the best I had, because no matter what I tried in naming the small lake where Vin, Jean, Andie, and Suzanne grew up, Tonsil Lake it remained. 

It was my first ever women’s fiction title. It was first released in 2013 and over ten years later, I wanted to see it again. I wanted to go to Hope Island with the Girls the summer they were all 51, laugh and mourn with them, and shake my head at some of the parts of their stories they made me tell.  

Two years ago, my sons took me to Maine, where I’d never been, and I felt there what I’d felt all those years ago when I read Elisabeth Ogilvie novels and again when I wrote The Girls of Tonsil Lake. 

I hope you’ll give it a look, and I hope you like it. 

Blurb: 

Four women whose differences only deepen the friendship forged in a needy childhood...  

They were four little girls living in ramshackle trailers beside a lake in rural Indiana. They shared everything from dreams to measles to boyfriends to more dreams. As they grew up, everything in their lives changed--except their friendship. Through weddings and divorces, births and deaths, one terrible secret has kept them close despite all the anger, betrayal, and pain. Now, forty years later, facing illness, divorce, career challenges, and even addiction, the women come together once again for a bittersweet month on an island in Maine. Staring down their fifties, they must consider the choices life is offering them now and face the pain of what happened long ago. Secrets are revealed and truths uncovered, but will their time together cement their lifelong friendship--or drive them apart forever? 

Excerpt: 

Jean 

“It’s where I’d slept,” I said. “It was hard to get used to being in a bed again.” I met Andie’s eyes when she came back to the table. Are you okay? I was doing it again, asking the question we always asked, expecting the slight nod, the even slighter smile that meant I’m fine. Don’t worry. 

She nodded, smiled, picked up her coffee cup. 

“I wake up mad,” said Suzanne. “Tommy slept through the night from the time he was a few weeks old. Why is he all of a sudden waking me?” She looked haunted, and I reached to squeeze her hand. 

“I keep thinking, though,” said Andie, “how we didn’t do that after they hauled Chuck out of the lake. We should have had nightmares, but none of us did. We slept better than we had for months.” 

I felt my eyes widen. We never, ever talked about this. Even when Rosie died and we stood gaunt-eyed and grieving beside her open grave, we hadn’t talked about Chuck Hardesty. 

“Our nightmares came from his living, not his death,” said Vin tersely and accurately. “Although I have to admit that sometimes I wonder…” 

She stopped, looking down at the cup in front of her, picking up the paper napkin that lay beside it and shredding it. There was silence between us, then Suzanne’s hand came to the middle of the table. I placed mine on top. Andie’s and Vin’s hands came to the stack of intertwined fingers at nearly the same time. 

“That’s funny,” said Andie, “when we used to do that, no one had wrinkly knuckles or brown spots on their hands. What the hell happened?” She rolled her eyes at Suzanne. “You, of course, still don’t have brown spots or wrinkly knuckles.” 

Vin never finished her sentence. She didn’t have to, because we all wondered the same thing. Had these past two years of our lives—deaths, illnesses, and emotional traumas—been punishment for something that happened nearly forty years ago? 

It was time to go to the lake. 

Buy Links: 

Amazon: https://a.co/d/1AF21xt 

 Books2Read: https://books2read.com/u/bxGQQk 

Author bio

 Liz Flaherty has spent the past several years enjoying not working a day job, making terrible crafts, and writing stories in which the people aren’t young, brilliant, or even beautiful. She’s decided (and has to re-decide most every day) that the definition of success is having a good time. Along with her husband of lo, these many years, kids, grands, friends, and the occasional cat, she’s doing just that.