The One Thing Needful
Empire Girls
Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan
Harlequin MIRA
June 2014
"And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving." Luke 10:39-40, ESV
In two very short verses, the Biblical writer has summed up a relationship so well that merely to invoke the names of the women two thousand years later is to sum up and categorize personalities, relationships, and mindsets. When we meet the protagonists of Empire Girls, their dual (and dueling) voices reaffirm our impressions: Rose is domestic, house-proud, concerned with appearance and doing the proper thing; Ivy is her father's disciple and playmate, less concerned with propriety, in search of experience, and perfectly content to let her older sister shoulder the practical burdens of living. And then their father dies, leaving them an unordinary bequest: a long-lost brother, a Lazarus to the sisters' Mary and Martha. In their search to restore life to their brother, Rose and Ivy are forced to reevaluate what they think they know about themselves as well as each other. Rose blooms in thrilling and romantic fashion; Ivy finds support and steadiness in unexpected places.
This is the second outing for Nyhan and Hayes; their first, I'll Be Seeing You, is an epistolary novel in two voices, highlighting friendship forged between strangers. It is a lovely and tender novel, full of courage and the small, repeated graces that make bearable a life full of uncertainty. Empire Girls, while still a story of different voices and multiple viewpoints, is a very different novel, stronger and deeper than its predecessor.
The secondary voices in Empire Girls are as fully personalities as Rose and Ivy: intense and poetic Santino; Jimmy, unwilling to be pinned down; John-the-Wonder, who reveals surprising capabilities; Cat, who embodies her nickname. These characters help drive the sisters' growth and have their own motivations rather than being simply mirrors for Rose and Ivy. The authors clearly trust one another more and are more familiar with one another; the tone of writing is sharper and faster, befitting the novel's setting in New York city.
Hayes and Nyhan are a welcome pair among the sometimes overheated voices of "women's fiction." I look forward to future collaborations.
