Willas Grove, Laura Munson
Willas Grove, Laura Munson
2 Rating(s)
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Willa's Grove

Author: Laura Munson

Narrator: Xe Sands

Unabridged: 11 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/03/2020

Synopsis

Four women. One week. One question.Recent widow Willa Silvester, struggling to find a future, invites three friends to her Montana homestead, where they can learn from nature and one another as they contemplate their second acts.You are invited to the rest of your life.Three women, from coast to coast and in between, open their mailboxes to the same intriguing invitation. Although leading entirely different lives, each has found herself at a similar, jarring crossroads. Right when these women thought they’d be comfortably settling into middle age, their carefully curated futures have turned out to be dead ends.The sender of the invitation is Willa Silvester, who is reeling from the untimely death of her beloved husband and the reality that she must say goodbye to the small mountain town they founded together. Yet as Willa mourns her losses, an impossible question keeps staring her in the face: So now what?Struggling to find the answer alone, fiercely independent Willa eventually calls a childhood friend who happens to be in her own world of hurt—and that’s where the idea sparks. They decide to host a weeklong interlude from life, and invite two other friends facing their own quandaries. Soon the four women converge at Willa’s Montana homestead, a place where they can learn from nature and one another as they contemplate their second acts together in the rugged wilderness of big sky country.

About Laura Munson

Laura Munson is the bestselling author of This Is Not The Story You Think It Is, which chronicles her journey through her own midlife crossroads. Drawing from the striking response to her memoir, the essay version of it in the New York Times “Modern Love” column, and her speaking events at women’s conferences across the US, Laura founded the acclaimed Haven Writing Retreats and Workshops. After watching hundreds of people find their unique and essential voices under the big sky of Montana she calls home, Laura created Willa, the invitation, the friends, and the town to share what she has learned with people globally. Her work has been published and featured in many media outlets throughout the world.

About Xe Sands

Xe Sands has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of the Nightwalkers series from Jaquelyn Frank. She has received several honors, including AudioFile Earphones Awards and a coveted Audie Award, and she was named Favorite Debut Romance Narrator of 2011 in the Romance Audiobooks poll.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Marian

When you put four women together -- each at a major crossroads in her life -- you've got an interesting premise for a book, but in addition to dialogue and discussion there needs to be action. And I felt that this book lacked the latter. The three women (Harriet, Bliss, and Jane) who come to Montan......more

Goodreads review by Sheila

Montana is the star of Laura Munson’s Willa’s Grove, a beautiful place, beautifully depicted, with tiny towns so small one might even be for sale—but what happens to people when their town is sold. The novel’s costars are four women who, like the town of Willa, are wondering where they go “from here.......more

Goodreads review by Lori L

Willa's Grove by Laura Munson is a recommended feel-good women's novel featuring four very different women at a cross road in their lives. It all started with an invitation from one woman sent to three different women that invited them to the rest of their lives by visiting a lodge at a homestead in......more

Quotes

“So what’s next? That’s the big question in the fiction debut from memoirist Munson…Readers will be able to relate to the themes of female friendship and personal growth.” Booklist

“This novel is intended to be an inspirational story, and it delivers. Many women readers will find themselves represented by one or more of the characters…Men, too, can learn from the characters’ experiences. They might come to understand the women in their own lives better, as well as find their own secret anxieties represented and tackled through the story…Willa’s Grove offers a pathway to writing one’s own new story.” New York Journal of Books

"Willa’s Grove is an easy read with a captivating premise: what happens when four women, each in a mid-life crisis, gather for a week in rural Montana to ponder the answer to the question: so now what?” San Francisco Book Review

“Women have always searched for community during life’s critical crossroads, but it’s the rare novel that nails the tone and tempo of what it feels like to embed with kindred spirits and share stories, joys, and fears from the heart. Every reader will relate to this beautiful story in powerful and personal ways. I cherished my time with Willa’s Grove, sitting in this circle of women who, by the end, felt like best friends.” Lee Woodruff, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“This is the novel we need right now. Willa’s Grove is an affirmation of creativity, sisterhood, and the power of belonging. The simple act of taking care of one another moves mountains. Don’t tell anyone, but I think Laura Munson might have just made me a better person.” Chelsea Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Heartsick and others

“I love this wonderful novel about women, friendship, and our deep-rooted need for community. Laura Munson has created a memorable and deeply relatable character in Willa Silvester. You’ll want to give this book to your best friend the minute you finish reading it.” Ann Leary, New York Times bestselling author of The Good House

“Willa’s Grove is the book my heart needed right now. When I finished it, I held it to my chest and took a long, deep breath. It’s a love letter to female friendships, to the power of vulnerability, to the strength of community, and daring to live authentically. An absolute must-read.” Julie Barton, New York Times bestselling author of Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me from Myself

“Reading Willa’s Grove is like going to a girls’ weekend where everyone spills their guts and tells the truth about their apparently not-so-perfect lives. It’s truthful, raw, and, well, totally fun.” Cathy Lamb, author of All about Evie

“[A] stirring debut…Against the backdrop of a gorgeous landscape and an abundant kitchen, Willa’s Grove shows the insights, comfort, and courage that women can find in community. It just might inspire you to seek a community—and a new adventure—of your own.” Janet Benton, author of Lilli de Jong

“A story of new friendships and old desires, secrets and regrets, Willa’s Grove is just the midlife vacation read every woman needs to spur her on and grab hold of ‘So now what?’ I didn’t read this aching and inspiring novel as much as wrapped myself up in it, following the heartache, yearning, and triumph in each woman’s personal story.” V. C. Chickering, author of Nookietown and Twisted Family Values

Awards

  • A USA Today bestseller
  • Reading the West Book Award
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