Meet award-winning fiction writer Ellyn Bache, author of nine novels (including “Safe Passage,” which became a Susan Sarandon film), a short story collection that won the Willa Cather Fiction Prize, a nonfiction journal, and several books for teens and children. 

The Art of Saying Goodbye
Morrow Trade Paperbacks,  $13.99

It’s an Okra Pick! 

                                                                 . . . which means it was  chosen for special attention by the Southern Indie Booksellers (SIBA), who select  a handful of  books they’re most excited about, from the hundreds published each season

and was selected as a “Hot Pick” at the 2011 Detroit Jewish Book Fair

and is a SIBA Book of the Year Award nominee 

In a gesture of support and affection for a long-time neighbor who has fallen ill, four women in a close-knit suburban development tie white ribbons to trees in front of their houses, and embark on a powerful journey of transformation. Their ailing friend has always been the neighborhood star, an effervescent beauty whose charm draws all of them in.  As they grapple with her illness, each of them begins to see the pressing issues in her own life with new perspective.  A marriage put on hold because of a difficult child, a nurse’s eerie and unwanted gift of diagnosis, a widow’s destructive bitterness, and the price of a successful career, all come into play to shape their stories. Ultimately, each one learns to say goodbye … but not before drawing from her friend’s strength the courage to move on and change, as she recognizes that her own life, in the afterglow of someone else’s, is richer and more precious than she thought.

Praise for The Art of Saying Goodbye