It's about healing. After a couple of rough years, Emily is finally getting things back together. She doesn't need to re-do everything at work three times, her young daughter's soccer uniform is almost always clean the day of a game, and meals are pretty darn reliable, too. But hey, becoming a widow at thirty-three kind of knocks the starch out of you. It's about family. Then Emily's dad has an Event (only her mom would call a minor heart attack that -- what is it, a bar mitzvah?). Next, her sister Claudia's ex-husband starts stealing their kids' Ritalin for the high -- and wouldn't you replace it with The Pill to teach him a lesson? (His unexpected, uh, frontal development was just a howlingly funny bonus -- honest.) And then Emily's relentlessly sensible oldest sister, Leah, dumps her businessman fiancé for a rock musician. It's about never letting them see your gray. Now Jake, Emily's best friend, seems to be spending a lot of time at her house. Which she likes way too much. Which is kind of confusing. So what's a girl to do, but call an emergency meeting of the sisters' monthly hair-color-and-gossip session, to make the world seem sane again? For the Simon sisters, hair dyeing is a ritual. The eldest, Leah, favors reds and blondes, while the middle sister, Claudia, prefers browns light and dark. The youngest, Emily, is thankful she doesn't have to worry about the pesky gray hairs that plague her sisters. But she has plenty of concerns of her own--she's still reeling from the death of her husband, Vince, and trying to care for their daughter, Abby. Luckily, Vince's best friend, Jake, is always there to help out, but Emily is starting to worry that she feels more than friendship for him. Claudia has been dating a series of bad men, and Leah is trying to find Mr. Right even as she falls for a sexy younger man. But a pair of health scares tries the trio's nerves and brings them closer together. Ultimately, the sisters' love for each other is the real strength of Rendahl's warm and touching novel. Kristine Huntley Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Eileen Rendahl is the author of the Downtown Press novels Balancing in High Heels and Do Me, Do My Roots, which was nominated for a RITA Award. Her short fiction appears in the New Year's story collection In One Year and Out the Other. She lives near her tight-knit family in California. Chapter One: There Are Some Events to Which You Don't Want to Be Invited Leah One part Apricot Glaze (#38), one part Titian Red (#74), one part developer. Forty minutes. Some people are born to be redheads even though they're not born redheads. Claudia Two parts Medium Ash Brown (#28), one part developer. Twenty minutes. Roots a little light, but acceptable. Is acceptable good enough? We say no: we will not bow down to hair color mediocrity. My alarm clock read 2:47 AM when the phone jarred me awake. After I'd hit the snooze button several times in a futile attempt to get the noise to stop and finally answered the phone, my mother's voice chirped unnaturally brightly into my ear. "Hello, dear. Did I wake you?" "Well, yeah, it's almost three o'clock in the morning." In these situations, it's my usual practice to lie. Oh, no, I'll say. Of course I wasn't sleeping at 6:00 AM on a Saturday morning on one of those rarest of days that my daughter might actually sleep in. Why, I've already dusted and vacuumed the house and was getting ready to do push-ups. Why do I do this? I have no idea. Is there any shame to sleeping? There are news reports all the time about how sleep deprived we are, and how dangerous it is with drivers falling asleep at the wheel and machine operators pushing the wrong buttons. I'm actually performing a public service by sleeping. Maybe I'm worried that they'll think I'm lazy. At three o'clock in the morning, however, I figured subterfuge was pointless. "I'm sorry, dear. It's just that..." Here she paused and tittered. No one can titter quite like my mother when under stress. Many have tried and failed. I myself usually let out horrible wheezy laughs or occasionally an hysterical squeal, but I can't titter worth a damn. "Well, your father has had an event." An event? What, did he suddenly get up at two in the morning and decide to have a bar mitzvah, and they were calling to invite me? "Mama," I said. "What are you talking about?" "Oh, dear, well, it's just..." Her tone brightened more; soon she'd be chittering like a demented squirrel. "Your sister's here. I'll let her explain." I listened to the phone being passed, hugging my knees under the blanket. My sister Leah's terse voice came over the line. "Daddy's had a heart attack. Find some place to park Abby and get your ass to the hospital." I found them behind curtain number seven in the ER. Trust me, if Monty Hall had ever offered this as an option, Let's Make a Deal would have been a much tenser show. Choose Curtain Number One and you win