A LIFE OF BRIGHT IDEAS

A LIFE OF BRIGHT IDEAS by Sandra Kring

From the back of the book:

A secret tore best friends Evelyn "Button" Peters and Winnalee Malone apart.  Now, nearly a decade later, a secret brings them back together.

Nine years ago Button and Winnalee began recording observations in their Book of Bright Ideas, a tome they believed would solve the mystery of how to live a mistake-free life.  Now it's 1970, a time of peace, love, war, and personal heartbreak.  Button's mother is dead and her grieving father has all but abandoned his children.  Quiet, thoughtful Button has traded college for a sewing job in her mother's bridal shop to help her Aunt Verdella raise her whirlwind six-year-old brother.  In Button's free time, she writes letters to the boy she loved from afar through high school, hoping he will come to lover her as more than a friend.

Then, like that magical Wisconsin summer of '61, Button is greeted with the wild, gusty arrival of Winnalee.  Now a beautiful flower child, Winnalee is everything Button is now.  She's been to Woodstock and enjoys "free love" but their steadfast bond of friendship is tested as Button begins to notice the cracks in Winnalee's carefree façade.  And then Winnalee's mother arrives with a surprise that Button never sees coming, and the fiery determination to put things right in both families once and for all.

A few years ago, I read THE BOOK OF BRIGHT IDEAS and loved it.  I loved the characters and the deep friendship between Button and Winnalee and how that friendship changed them.  So when I saw that there was a sequel, I couldn't wait to read it.

And this one is as good as the first.  Both girls are older and have changed.   Their views of life have also changed.  Winnalee is wild as the wind, while Button is more subdued since her mother's death.  But being together again, they both have an influence over the other.  And the surprise that Winnalee's mother Freeda brings to town makes the biggest change in both of them.

I was so happy to read that Ms. Kring is planning another book about Button and Winnalee in the future.  Although untitled and unwritten, it's on my wish list.