Christmas morning of 1908, Santa brought Ruth a set of jacks while June received a lovely blonde doll. The sisters' fates seem predestined. By 1934, June is a wealthy doctor's wife working as a Betty Crocker, writing recipes in the Gold Medal Test Kitchen. Ruth toils on the family farm, caring for four kids and a bedridden husband. The Sisters of Summit Avenue, not surprisingly, are estranged yet linked by love and loyalty. As Lynn Cullen (Mrs. Poe, Twain's End) tells their story, their secrets reveal the complexities of their relationship as well as the suffering of a Depression-era nation.
The sisters' childhoods are recalled as inequitable, but the real schism comes in 1921, when John is courting June. June is plagued by self-doubts, and her ambivalence leaves Ruth an opening--she snags the handsome farmer. In spite of her subsequent marriage and wealth, June is unhappy. Ruth, meanwhile, is immersed in motherhood, and after John contracts the mysterious "sleeping sickness" sweeping the country and becomes bedridden, she struggles endlessly. The sisters' sorrows, however, are matched in a third storyline: their mother has a deep, painful history that is never revealed yet infuses her every decision.
Cullen's carefully woven plot and sensitive character development are enhanced by her historic detail. A young Ruth and John dance the Charleston; in stark contrast just 12 years later, Ruth, exhausted, struggles to survive a dust storm. As "a Betty," June markets Gold Medal to a "plain penny-squeezing Jane," in a groundbreaking marketing technique. Eventually, honesty opens the door to renewing the family's affections, and together the women enter the 1950s as a confident, loving team. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco