Author RaeAnne Thayne Shares Her Favorite Sister Stories

RaeAnne Thayne: Favorite Sister Stories

I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to come from a family of seven children, including five girls. My sisters are my dearest friends. We laugh together, grieve together, share secrets and troubles and dreams. The relationship between sisters can be both joy and challenge, which is probably why writers so often choose to write books exploring the dynamics between them. From Sense and Sensibility to Little Women, many beloved favorites have focused on the bonds of sisterhood. Here are a few of mine.

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary

I adored every book about Ramona Quimby but this one in particular always spoke to my heart. The first book in the 8-book Ramona Quimby series, Beezus and Ramona explores the relationship between older and younger sisters. When I first read this book, I related to Ramona (in fact, my family often called me Ramona, in homage to Ramona Quimby), but as I grew older, I could definitely relate more to Beezus and the trials of having pesky younger siblings. A story for every sister, no matter where you fall in the order of things.

Synopsis: Having a little sister like four-year-old Ramona isn’t always easy for Beezus Quimby. With a wild imagination, disregard for order, and an appetite for chaos, Ramona makes it hard for Beezus to be the responsible older sister she knows she ought to be…especially when Ramona threatens to ruin Beezus’s birthday party. Will Beezus find the patience to handle her little sister before Ramona turns her big day into a complete disaster?

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Two sisters living very different lives face the horror of World War II after Germany invades France. Each has a remarkable journey, forging her own path toward survival in this heartbreaking, beautiful, vivid story that has lingered with me years after I first read it.

Synopsis: With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

This is another book about World War II but from a very different perspective and experience. May and Pearl must leave their beloved city of Shanghai as Japanese bombs begin to fall when their father tells them he has arranged marriages for them in America. The sisters then begin a journey that takes them through the countryside of China, across the Pacific to Los Angeles, trying to find love with the strangers they married. It is a novel of courage and triumph but ultimately about the sisters and their relationship.

Synopsis: In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.

As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules.

About The Path To Sunshine Cove

With the emotional pull of Debbie Macomber, Barbara Delinsky and Susan Wiggs, RaeAnne Thayne brings readers an uplifting, brand new story told with her trademark charm and heart.

She knows what’s best for everyone but herself…

With a past like hers, Jessica Clayton feels safer in a life spent on the road. She’s made a career out of helping others downsize—because she’s learned the hard way that the less “stuff,” the better, a policy she applies equally to her relationships. But a new client is taking Jess back to Cape Sanctuary, a town she once called home…and that her little sister, Rachel, still does. The years apart haven’t made a dent in the guilt Jess still carries after a handgun took the lives of both their parents and changed everything between them.

While Jess couldn’t wait to put the miles between her and Cape Sanctuary, Rachel put down roots, content for the world—and her sister—to think she has a picture-perfect life. But with the demands of her youngest child’s disability, Rachel’s marriage has begun to fray at the seams. She needs her sister now more than ever, yet she’s learned from painful experience that Jessica doesn’t do family, and she shouldn’t count on her now.

Against her judgment, Jess finds herself becoming attached—to her sister and her family, even to her client’s interfering son, Nate—and it’s time to put everything on the line. Does she continue running from her past, or stay put and make room for the love and joy that come along with it?