The Mermaid Chair

While Kidd places an obvious importance on the role of mysticism and legend in this tale, including the mysterious mermaid's chair at the center of the island's history, the relationships between characters is what gives this novel its true weight. Once she returns to her childhood home, Jessie is forced to confront not only her relationship with her estranged mother, but her other emotional ties as well. After decades of marriage to Hugh, her practical yet conventional husband, Jessie starts to question whether she is craving an independence she never had the chance to experience. After she meets Brother Thomas, a handsome monk who has yet to take his final vows, Jessie is forced to decide whether passion can coexist with comfort, or if the two are mutually exclusive. As her soul begins to reawaken, Jessie must also confront the circumstances of her father's death, a tragedy that continues to haunt Jessie and Nelle over thirty years later.

By boldly tackling such major themes as love, betrayal, grief, and forgiveness, The Mermaid Chair forces readers to question whether moral issues can always be interpreted in black or white. It is this ability to so gracefully present multiple sides of a story that reinforces Kidd's reputation as a well-respected modern literary voice. --Gisele Toueg

Product Description
A dazzling novel of passion and spirituality the instant blockbuster bestseller from the author of The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd s phenomenal debut, The Secret Life of Bees, became a runaway bestseller that is still on the New York Times bestseller list more than two years after its paperback publication. Now, in her luminous new novel, Kidd has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legion of fans. Telling the story of Jessie Sullivan a love story between a woman and a monk, a woman and her husband, and ultimately a woman and her own soul Kidd charts a journey of awakening and self-discovery illuminated with a brilliance that only a writer of her ability could conjure.

Book clubs, start your engines. . . . [The Mermaid Chair] is a tapestry strengthened by bonds between women that bridge pain and loss.
USA Today
The pages all but turn themselves. Parade
Soulful in its probing of the human heart. San Francisco Chronicle
Kidd draws connections from the feminine to the divine to the erotic that a lesser writer wouldn t see, and might not have the guts to follow. Time
It s hard to put this book down for things like eating and sleeping. Elle