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The Pursuit of Love
Nancy Mitford
This was the novel modeled on Nancy Mitford’s own aristocratic, eccentric family, and I read it over and over, wanting to plunge into the pages and be part of this mad family at Alconleigh, their mad, rambling Gloucestershire estate.
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This is Where I Leave You
Jonathan Tropper
Another of my favorites, where a family, with all their old wounds and rivalries, come together to sit shiva for the patriarch of the family. It’s funny, moving, poignant, and enormously astute.
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Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
It is still modern, still relevant, still the family I always aspired to have, and the bantering and love between the sisters was something I thought about often when writing The Sunshine Sisters.
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Kitchens of the Great Midwest
J. Ryan Stradal
This is an immersive, lovely novel, filled with wonderful food, and a woman who carves out a successful career for herself doing supper clubs. I absolutely borrowed from this, when I gave my character Lizzy the pop-up supper clubs, although I also gave her all my design quirks—come to my garden for dinner one summer, and you may as well have stepped into one of Lizzy’s farm supper clubs.
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Featured Book
The Sunshine Sisters
Jane Green
The Sunshine Sisters is the story of three sisters who grew up with a self-absorbed, narcissistic, selfish mother, and as a result, not only grew apart from her, but from each other. When she is diagnosed with a terminal disease, she calls them home to heal her relationship with them, and more importantly, enable them to again find the closeness they once had as little girls.
I grew up on a diet of Little Women, Little House on the Prairie and What Katy Did, along with a smattering of Nancy Mitford. All I ever wanted was a bunch of wayward sisters, which is perhaps why I have written a number of books that focus on what I didn’t have—if I couldn’t have it in real life, I could certainly create it in my imagination.
These are some of the books that, one way or another, inspired The Sunshine Sisters.
Author Photo: © Tom McGovern
