Flight Lessons

by Patricia Gaffney

Published 1 July 2002
From the author of the hugely successful THE SAVING GRACES and CIRCLE OF THREE comes another beautiful tale of life and love Growing up, Anne admired and emulated her unmarried Aunt Rose, who led a much more exotic and glamorous life than her mother. But when Anna's mother lies dying, Anna finds out that the woman she looked to more than her own mother betrayed them both in the worst way. Now an acutely mistrustful adult, Anna suffers yet another betrayal, at the hands of her lover. Looking for an escape, Anna returns home, though it means helping her aunt run the family restaurant. Rose, who for 20 years has struggled to regain Anna's trust, realizes that although her niece has come home, it's clear she doesn't plan to stay. Feelings are frosty as ever, and Anna is so deadset on leaving, that she fails to recognize true love, even as it reaches up to grab her by the heart. Moving, funny, and ultimately reassuring about life and love, Gaffney's new novel is just the thing her readers have been waiting for.

The Saving Graces

by Patricia Gaffney

Published 3 June 1999
Imagine a bond that's richer than that between siblings, stronger than those within a marriage. Four ordinary women have found just this, and after more than ten years of shared life, their friendship has become a remarkable and invincible force Isabel has a broken marriage behind her and a grown up son she loves but rarely sees. Two years into remission from breast cancer, she embraces everything that is alternative, and exists by forgiveness. Lee is blessed with money, but didn't find love until she had abandoned all hope; now she has Henry - but no children, a longing that seems a wish too far. Rudy is young and beautiful, damaged by her past and an off-centred family, and now married to a brutal and controlling man. Emma, feisty and insecure, does not believe in love - until she falls for the one man she can never have. In this warm, funny, spirited and heartfelt novel, Patricia Gaffney unfolds two years in the lives of the Saving Graces, as together they face one another's high and low points. But then when out of the blue tragedy strikes and they are faced with the unthinkable, a shadow looms over their bond, threatening to destroy it for ever...