Paddock’s Picks: The Good Daughters

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock
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This is the second book of Joyce Maynard’s that I have reviewed. She is a brilliant writer, maybe my favorite female author, even though she isn’t from the South, but from New Hampshire, the setting of this novel.

I tend to like novels that take place in the South, a region I’m familiar with. But Joyce Maynard makes me feel like I’ve lived in New Hampshire, even though I’ve never set foot in the state. That particular talent of an author is called having a sense of place and making the reader have the same sense of place, too. She’s good, let me tell you.

“The Good Daughters” is about two girls born on the Fourth of July in 1950 in the same hospital at almost the same time. Because of this connection — both conceived during a hurricane and born on the same day — the families of each girl feel a bond of kinship, even though the families are not remotely similar.

Ruth Plank grows up on a farm with her parents and four sisters. She is nicknamed Beanpole because she is tall and thin, totally unlike her sisters who are on the short, square side like their mother. Ruth loves her father and follows him around while he performs his farm duties on the land that has belonged to the Planks for many generations. Ruth has a talent for art, which her father encourages, and it is that talent that eventually leads her to an art school in Boston.

The other birthday sister is Dana Dickerson. Her mother and father move around a lot, living in one little rent house after another. Dana’s brother, Roy, is handsome and athletic, but without much purpose in life. Her father and mother, whom she calls George and Val are not much good at parenting.

The Dickersons try to visit the Plank’s farm each summer, cashing in on the wonderful strawberries they sell at their roadside stand. Dana always receives some small gift from Mrs. Plank when the Planks make an annual visit to the Dickersons (somehow Mrs. Plank always seems to know where the Dickersons are currently living, be it in Florida or Maine or New Hampshire), and Ruth gets a gift from Val.

The birthday sisters really don’t like each other; in fact, both wonder what keeps the connection going year after year.

The novel, told in chapters by alternating birthday sisters, traces the lives of the girls from children to adults during the Vietnam war, the assassinations of both Kennedys, Woodstock.

Dana falls in love with a woman, Clarice, and Ruth falls in love with Dana’s brother, Ray.  But tragedy and sadness ends both love affairs.

Along about the fourth chapter I started figuring out the book, seeing the handwriting on the wall, if you will. Promise me you’ll keep turning the pages until the end. Don’t even think about turning to the end of the book before you actually get there. You’ll be ever so sorry if you do.

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All the time I was reading this book, my mouth was watering from the descriptions of fresh corn on the cob and strawberries. I thought about my friend, Jan Kelley, of Pocola, Okla., and how sweet her strawberries are picked right out of the garden.

As a Master Gardner who has turned an Oklahoma horse pasture into a large and bountiful lawn full of flowers and vegetables, Jan watches the weather like all farmers do. Pilots of aircraft keep an eye out to the sky and an ear to the Weather Channel, as well. Since Jan herself is a pilot and her husband, Doug, is a pilot for Arkansas Best, either can give you a weather report in a moment’s notice, not only for weather in Northwest Arkansas, but also the weather in New York, Miami, or San Francisco.

Jan’s love of growing food and flowers comes from her dad who always had a garden on their two acre farm in Columbia, Ill.

As one of three daughters, she says she tried to be a son for her father and enjoyed following him around, asking questions and helping him with his hunting dogs. Her favorite food growing up was corn on the cob, straight from the stalk to the pot within minutes. She and her sisters picked strawberries from three long rows. Any extra could be sold to their neighbors for spending money.

In addition to growing things, Jan has always loved to read. Her favorite books as a child were “Black Beauty,” “Old Yeller,” and the Clara Barton nurse series.

“I always brought home a sack of books from the library,” she remembers.

“Reading is one of the most important things in life. You can go anywhere, be anyone, and learn about everything. I felt like the biggest gift I could give my children was the joy of reading,” Jan says. “Reading is a great comfort. It means you are never bored.”

Jan is reading “ Night over Water” by Ken Follett. Waiting on her night stand is “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter” by Tom Franklin, one of the books I recently reviewed and enjoyed.