It’s the early 1980s. The four Padavano sisters, Julia, Sylvie, Cecelia and Emeline live in an Italian-American neighbourhood in Chicago where everyone knows everyone.
Julia is the eldest and most ambitious of the Padavano sisters. She’s her Daddy’s ‘rocket’. She’s the one who organises and fixes everything. In college, she meets a good-looking basketballer called William and they get married. When Julia’s little sister, Cecelia, gets pregnant out of wedlock at 17, Julia quickly ‘fixes’ things by also having a baby for the family to celebrate, thinking that if the two grandchildren come as package, her devoutly Catholic mama, Rose, will eventually accept them both. So Julia and William have a baby girl, four months after Cecelia’s child is born.
But William isn’t ready for fatherhood. He has a traumatic past that catches up with him. When he has a mental health breakdown and walks away from his wife and child, Julia’s little sister Sylvie keeps an eye on him in hospital. In the process of caring for him, however, she falls in love with him and that’s when the Padavano sisters are really blown apart.
The thing you need to know about this book is that it’s loosely based on Little Women. If you didn’t know that, it might just break your heart, but like Little Women, it’s one where the love of the four sisters ultimately shines through.
-Katrina Roe, RRL
