The Widow Season-Laura Brody

The Widow Season
Laura Brody
Berkley, Jun 2009, $14.00
ISBN: 9780425227657

Sarah McConnell sees her husband wearing his Yankees cap at the grocery store. She is shocked as David drowned kayaking three months ago though his body was never found. Later Sarah senses David is near and is not scared because she knows he will not harm her. She realizes as she sees him on the couch, she is not mourning him, but what they lost in the last few years of their marriage. He tells her they need a revival like what happened to him on the river when the storm suddenly hit and tipped over his kayak. He got to shore and made it back to their cabin, but felt it was too late to call Sarah. Instead he started painting.

Her brother-in-law Nate and Sarah are there for each other in grief but soon make love, but she is upset in the morning filled with guilt. Sarah comes to the cabin to see David and pick up paintings for a show a gallery owner is putting on of his works. David is thankful Sarah has not given up on him while Sarah is thankful she has a second chance to spend time with David until he asks her if he is dead to her. David wants Sarah to join him in a warm spot, but will she?

The premise of this fine paranormal contemporary, his visiting his widow after his death, is intriguing and well executed so that readers will believe David came back. The cast is extremely strong especially the lead characters and the brother. Though Sarah’s affair with her brother-in-law is intended for the audience to understand two grieving people finding some solace with one another; instead it feels more of a shocker device to upset David. THE WIDOW SEASON is a wonderful relationship drama as a couple drifting apart in life reached out to each other in death.

Harriet Klausner