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In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, as young lovers do, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring. By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of virtually all seven thousand of the country's Jews. Meanwhile, in America, Sydney has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby.
Combining the story of one long American twentieth-century marriage with one of the most stirring stories of World War II, Leeway Cottage is a beautifully written tour de force of a novel.
It's daring when a writer undertakes a story with intentionally unlikable main characters; Anthony Trollope was one of the very few to pull it off, in The Eustace Diamonds. Fortunately, Gutcheon has strong narrative skills, so while Leeway Cottage' doesn't approach the breathless, involving hurtle of Trollope, it's absorbing, mostly because of the subplot about the Danes' remarkable efforts to save the country's Jews (almost all of whom survived the war, despite the German occupation).
More Reviews and RecommendationsBeth Gutcheon may have "gone Hollywood" when Still Missing, her 1981 novel about an abducted boy, was adapted into the feature film Without a Trace (Gutcheon penned the screenplay) -- but she hasn't forgotten her roots as a novelist, as evidenced by the acclaimed More than You Know and Leeway Cottage.
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May 08, 2008: This is a book I recommend without hesitation to fellow book lovers. It explores the complexities of human relationships and brings in history in an interesting way. It's a good story, but not one for readers looking to find only lovable, one-dimensional characters. The author's characters will evoke many emotions in the reader, some negative. It's not challenging to read, but provokes thoughtful review of one's own relationships and how better to deal with them.
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August 03, 2006: The synposis of the book makes it sound so interesting. The book has no center--it is all over the place and I am still not sure what the point is. The author had too many different characters in her novel and I found it difficult to keep track of them all because they didn't really stand out. The Resistance parts don't flow with the book, I am not sure what the author was hoping to accomplish by having this in the book. The title of the book is called Leeway Cottege, yet I am not sure why. Parts of this book were boring and I was happy to finish it. The author did put some great historical facts in the book.

Name:
Beth Gutcheon
Current Home:
New York, NY
Date of Birth:
March 18, 1945
Place of Birth:
Sewickley, Pennsylvania
Education:
B.A., Harvard University
Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She attended the Sewickley Academy, Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Harvard College, where she took an honors B.A. in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine. In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and she has made her living as a full-time storyteller (novels and occasional screenplays) since then. Gutcheon's novels have been translated into 14 languages (if you count the pirated Chinese edition of Still Missing), plus large-print and audio formats. Still Missing was made into a feature film called Without a Trace and was also published in a Reader's Digest Condensed version, which particularly pleased the author's mother.
Biography courtesy of the author's official web site.
Gutcheon shared some fun and fascinating anecdotes in our interview:
"When my second novel was in manuscript, a subsidiary rights guy at my publisher secretly sent a copy of it to a friend who was working in Hollywood with the producer Stanley Jaffe, who had made Goodbye Columbus, The Bad News Bears, and Kramer v. Kramer, run Paramount Pictures before he was 30, and met the queen of England. My agent had an auction set up for the film rights of Still Missing for the following Friday, with some very heavy-hitter producers and such, which was exciting enough. Two days before the auction, Stanley Jaffe walked into my agent's office in New York and said, ‘I want to make a pre-emptive bid for Beth Gutcheon's novel.'
‘But you haven't read it,' says Wendy.
‘Nevertheless,' says Stanley.
‘Well, I have this auction set up. You're going to have to pay a lot to have me call it off,' says Wendy.
‘I understand that,' says Stanley.
Wendy named a number.
Stanley said, ‘Done,' or words to that effect.
To this day, remembering Wendy's next phone call to me causes me something resembling a heart attack.
When, several weeks later, Stanley called and asked me if I had an interest in writing the screenplay of the movie that became Without a Trace, I said, ‘No.'
He quite rightly hung up on me.
I then spent twenty minutes in a quiet room wondering what I had done. A man with a shelf full of Oscars, on cozy terms with Lizzie Windsor, had just offered me film school for one, all expenses paid by Twentieth Century Fox. He knew I didn't know how to write screenplays. He wasn't offering to hire me because he wanted to see me fail. Who cares that all I ever wanted to see on my tombstone was ‘She Wrote a Good Book?' The chance to learn something new that was both hard and really interesting was not resistible. I spent the rest of the weekend tracking him from airport to airport until I could get him back on the phone. (This was before we all had cell phones.)
I was sitting in my bleak office on a wet gray day, on which my newly teenaged son had shaved his head and I had just realized I'd lost my American Express card, when the phone rang. ‘Is this Beth Gutcheon?' asked a voice that made my hair stand on end. I said it was. ‘This is Paul Newman,' said the voice.
It was, too. The fine Italian hand of Stanley Jaffe again, he'd recommended me to work on a script Paul was developing. Paul invited me to dinner to talk about it. My son said, ‘For heaven's sake, Mother, don't be early and don't be tall.' I was both. We did end up writing a script together; it was eventually made for television with Christine Lahti, and fabulous Terry O'Quinn in the Paul Newman part, called The Good Fight."
"I read all the time. My husband claims I take baths instead of showers because I can't figure out how to read in the shower, and he's right."
"I started buying poetry for the first time since college after 9/11, but wasn't reading it until a friend mentioned that she and her husband read poetry in the morning before they have breakfast. She is right -- a pot of tea and a quiet table in morning sunlight is exactly the right time for poetry. I read The New York Times Book Review in the bath and on subways because it is light and foldable. I listen to audiobooks through earphones while I take my constitutionals or do housework. I read physical books for a couple of hours every night after everyone else is in bed -- usually two books alternately, one novel and one biography or book of letters."
"I have a dog named Daisy Buchanan. She ran for president last fall; her slogan was ‘No Wavering, No Flip-flopping, No pants.' She doesn't know yet that she didn't win, so if you meet her, please don't tell her."
"Last little-known fact: When I was in high school I invented, by knitting one, a double-wide sweater with two turtlenecks for my brother and his girlfriend. It was called a Tweter and was even manufactured in college colors for a year or two. There was a double-paged color spread in Life magazine of models wearing Tweters and posing with the Jets football team. My proudest moment was the Charles Addams cartoon that ran in The New Yorker that year. It showed a Tweter in a store window, while outside, gazing at it in wonder, was a man with two heads."
What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Dickens often manages to be both dramatic and funny, while telling a thundering great story, but in Great Expectations, in spite of the unforgettable gargoyles like Miss Havisham and charming Wemmick with his Aged P, it's a very human story about the difference between how things look and how they really are. When Pip recognizes how he has fooled himself, and what he must accept about reality, you see that while Dickens has been amusing you with any number of major and minor melody lines that all seemed to be tripping along by themselves, he has in fact been in perfect control, building up to a major chord, every note right and every instrument contributing at just the right moment. I understood that to make a novel pay off like that, you have to know from the get-go what story you are telling, how it ends, what it means, and exactly what you want the reader to feel and know when it's over. It was the book that made me start thinking like a writer, not just as a passionate reader, about how stories are made.
What are your ten favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
If we vault over all the Oz books, The Just So Stories, the Doctor Doolittle books, E. B. White, The Wind in the Willows, and Alice through the Looking Glass, it's still hard to limit the list to ten, but here goes:
What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
I couldn't possibly listen to music or anything else while I'm writing. I don't like background music -- if music is worth playing I want to listen to it. When we're doing something quiet in the house, like paying bills or washing dishes, we listen to opera. When I'm out and about, and not listening to audiobooks (for instance at the gym, when I have to count how many ghastly repetitions I've done) I listen to singer-songwriters. Rosanne Cash is a lifelong favorite. I'm on a Leonard Cohen binge at the moment, but I alternate him with Carolyn Mark and Caitlin Cary and Stephen Merritt in Magnetic Fields guise, or other. 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields also a life favorite.
If you had a book club, what would it be reading?
Something by Siri Hustvedt -- probably The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. Hustvedt is doing something very dark and intense and pure in her novels that is utterly original. She writes better about the experience of art, of the arts in people's lives, than anyone I can think of, but she also does all the machinery of the novel perfectly, tight plotting, completely believable (yet unusual) characters, the mysterious, the frightening, the erotic -- she can do anything she wants, apparently.
Then A Glimpse of Scarlet -- short stories by Roxana Robinson. Short stories are a very a different discipline from novels, and often they feel underpopulated to me, or are looking through too confining a peephole, cutting out too much of the larger picture, to be telling a useful truth. But Robinson has a way of catching a character doing something so wickedly well observed, so revealing, that suddenly the whole life is before you. It would be fun to read a collection of really fine stories with a group, to see what could be learned about the art and the craft that make them work.
What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
Cookbooks -- especially a cookbook from a good cook who knows that the recipes work. If they are also not too hard for me, that's a plus; if they are too hard, I enjoy just reading them and learning what I can.
I like to give novels, if I've read them and loved them and know the taste of the person I'm giving them to. Probably my favorite to give and to get are books of letters. I love biography, too, but letters are particularly wonderful because they give you a voice, correct to the period (obviously), and because they are meant to be read by at least an audience of one other. Often diaries are either too sloppy (because not meant to be read) or contrived (because they are pretending to be private but really have an eye to posterity). This year I've made the letters of James Thurber last as long as I could, followed by the totally wonderful letters of John Gielgud. I especially love collections of letters between two writers. The letters of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford are delicious; I loved the letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, which in fact sent me on a Sylvia Townsend Warner binge, and am at the moment reading the letters of Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins. I have the six volumes of Virginia Woolf's letters on a shelf above me as I speak; I'm saving them against the day when I have to recover from something terrible, the way a saner person might stock pile quinine against malaria or Cipro in case of anthrax attack.
Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
No rituals, except silence and no interruptions unless one of the children calls from beside a distant highway with his car on fire. (This has happened, so I use an answering machine to monitor calls.) My desk is a complete mess of notes to myself, addresses and phone numbers to enter into Outlook, audiobooks to enter into my iPod, reference books, and empty water bottles I haven't carried to the recycling bin yet.
Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
I really don't have any rejection-slip stories, except that when I first got out of college I tried to write for children, under the truly misguided impression that that would be easier than writing for adults. No kind of writing is easy if you're unsuited for it, and writing for children isn't easy, period. But I published a couple of nonfiction books in my early twenties, which were easily sold because I knew things for which there was an audience, and I had the happy experience of having my first novel bid on by three publishers. The second was a big bestseller and a movie and so forth.
If you could choose one new writer to be "discovered," who would it be?
Jennifer Vanderbes. Her first novel, Easter Island, is unbelievably accomplished, beautiful and smart and complex and yet completely accessible. Why she isn't already the toast of the town I don't know, but I know she should be.
What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
Read everything. Work with discipline, in as repetitive a pattern as possible, same time period, same place, at least five days a week, if you possibly can. Be sure you're working in the right form. Lots of writers who should be writing novels struggle with short stories because that's what can be taught in M.F.A. programs, and of course there are writers struggling with novels whose gifts are better suited to short stories, or novellas, or fiction that takes place in some wonderful alternate universe, as Gregory Maguire does so brilliantly.
Be very careful when you choose your first readers; be sure you understand their taste, their ability to express their reactions, and how truly they wish you success. There are plenty of people who love you who might be dismayed if you were really successful, and they don't even know it themselves. Be very careful about showing a work in progress to anybody, same caveats as above. Your agent is the most important professional relationship in your life. Find someone who likes you, believes in you, and can get her phone calls returned.
This ambitious novel by the author of More than You Know traces the complicated relationship of affluent American Sydney Brant and her expatriate husband, Danish pianist Laurus Moss. Beth Gutcheon's narrative follows Sydney from her difficult childhood through her courtship and marriage. Not long after she becomes pregnant, Laurus leaves her, returning to Europe to help save Denmark's Jews. After the war, Laurus returns to America; the marriage is resilient but forever changed. This is a compelling, multilayered novel.
In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, as young lovers do, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring. By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of virtually all seven thousand of the country's Jews. Meanwhile, in America, Sydney has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby.
Combining the story of one long American twentieth-century marriage with one of the most stirring stories of World War II, Leeway Cottage is a beautifully written tour de force of a novel.
It's daring when a writer undertakes a story with intentionally unlikable main characters; Anthony Trollope was one of the very few to pull it off, in The Eustace Diamonds. Fortunately, Gutcheon has strong narrative skills, so while Leeway Cottage' doesn't approach the breathless, involving hurtle of Trollope, it's absorbing, mostly because of the subplot about the Danes' remarkable efforts to save the country's Jews (almost all of whom survived the war, despite the German occupation).
In Gutcheon's latest (after More Than You Know), Annabelle Sydney Brant grows up adored by her father and largely criticized by her mother. The best times of her life are spent in the family summer home, Leeway Cottage, in Dundee, ME. After her father's death, a miserable Sydney moves to New York City to study music in an act of rebellion against her mother's superficial lifestyle. There, she falls in love with Laurus Moss, a Danish pianist whom she eventually marries. When World War II breaks out, Laurus moves to London to help build the Danish Resistance and save Denmark's Jews from Nazi extermination. Meanwhile, Sydney gives birth to a daughter who, sadly, will not meet her father until the war is over. Though Sydney turns into a woman not unlike the mother she despises, her marriage endures. Gutcheon tells brave stories of the Danish people, including grim scenes set in concentration camps. A curious combination of a World War II historical/ summer house novel, this is a good old-fashioned, all-encompassing read, with tears and smiles guaranteed. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/05.]-Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
The wounds inflicted by bad parenting, the complexities of a flawed but enduring marriage, and Denmark's resistance to the Nazis: three compelling themes awkwardly yoked together in this ambitious latest from Gutcheon (More Than You Know, 2000, etc.). The author's gift for plunging readers directly into her story is evident on the first page, as three siblings sort through the belongings of their parents, who have died together in the family's summer home. Gutcheon then moves back to trace the history of Leeway Cottage in Maine and the miserable childhood of Sydney Brant, anxious daughter of cold, disapproving Candace. In 1938, Sydney falls in love with expatriate Danish pianist Laurus Moss, drawn to his warmth and delighted to shock her snobbish mother by marrying the grandson of a baker. The newlyweds spend a happy summer at Leeway in 1941, but when Laurus leaves a pregnant Sydney that fall to aid the European war effort, the narrative takes a sharp, startling turn. Sydney drops out almost completely for a hundred pages devoted to Laurus's family, particularly his sister Nina, one of the many Danes who risk their lives and save nearly all of the nation's Jews. By the time Nina is liberated from Ravensbruck concentration camp and Laurus returns to America, the grim Danish section has laid the groundwork for an entirely different perspective on Sydney. The unloved girl who seemed so appealing is revealed as a damaged, angry and selfish woman, though Gutcheon deftly drops in a few admirable acts to remind us no one is entirely good or all bad. Laurus remains steadfastly loyal, to the bewilderment of their three children as the narrative moves with increasing speed and selectiveness throughthe subsequent half-century. A harrowing account of Nina's ordeal at Ravensbruck makes an odd precursor to the final chapter at Leeway. Yet Gutcheon's insights are so keen, her sympathy for all her characters so contagious, that the story's imperfect structure can almost be forgiven. There's more going on here than the narrative can comfortably contain, but Gutcheon gets an A for effort and a solid B for achievement.
Loading...In April of 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, a rich girl of the Dundee summer colony named Sydney Brant marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well-matched, as young lovers do, but almost at once, their views of the world and their marriage begin to diverge. Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring, especially as his mother is Jewish. When Laurus chooses to leave Sydney in the fall of 1941 to help build a Danish Resistance from London, Sydney is dismayed. By the time they are reunited four years later, Laurus's family and the reader have been through one of the most stirring stories of the war, Denmark's courageous grass-roots rescue of virtually all 7000 of the country's Jews. Sydney in America has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby.
In the decades to come, many people, especially their three grown children, will wonder if these two very different people understand each other at all. If they do, how do they stay together? Laurus likes to claim that in heaven you get to see the movie of your life, with all the blanks filled in. In their old age Sydney fears what he might see and why he wants to know; their children fear he'll die and there won't be any movie.
But there will be.
We hope that the following questions and discussion topics will enhance your experience of this stirring epic. For more information about Beth Gutcheon and her previous works, visit www.bethgutcheon.com. For additional William Morrow reader's guides, visit us at www.harpercollins.com.
Discussion Questions
1. How would you characterize the narrator's voice, which sometimes echoes the sentiments of the characters? Describe the storyteller you envision as the novel unfolds. How does this narration compare to that of the many contributors to the Leeway Cottage Guest Book?
2. What do you make of the fact that Sydney's musical talent does not evolve into a profession for her, despite her desire for an unconventional role in the world? Do she and Laurus have a similar appreciation for the arts? In what way does she embody a shifting chapter in American cultural history?
3. From joining the Resistance to integrating his local YMCA, Laurus is willing to be an agent for justice at every turn. From where does he derive this courage? How does his understanding of compassion compare to that of the other men in Sydney's life, including her father, her son, and Neville?
4. Leeway Cottagecaptures the jealousy Candace feels regarding Sydney's relationship with her father, an emotion Sydney comes to understand when she is a mother herself. Do you believe this dynamic is common or rare? What factors contribute to it?
5. What theories do you have about the reason for Berthe Brant's suicide? Did her marriage to James mirror Sydney's marriage to Laurus in any way?
6. Discuss the role of Gladdy and her family in Sydney's life. What is the significance of Sydney and Laurus making their home at Leeway Cottage, rather than the house built by Sydney's ancestors?
7. Were you surprised by Sydney's infidelity with Neville? How do you interpret the scene in which she and Anselma have an awkward run-in with Gladdy? Do you consider Laurus to have been unfaithful to Sydney during the war?
8. What is the effect of Nina's closing chapter and its position in the novel? Why did Sydney so dislike Nina? What is your understanding of the bequest Nina made to Hans Katz?
9. The novel focuses on many little-known aspects of Nazi occupation, such as Niels Bohr's ultimatum and the Rosh Hashanah plot against Danish Jews. What history did you learn from Gutcheon's telling of it? In what way is this history the centerpiece of the novel?
10. What was your reaction to the death of Sydney and Laurus? Do you believe their deaths were due to dementia and accident, or would it have been in character for them to take their own lives? Why do you think Laurus' "movie" was about his sister, rather than about events that came later in his life?
11. In the last paragraph of her notes regarding the novel's historical inspiration, the author writes "their marriage lasts, as did so many in their generation, but whether it actually worked, and if so, how, becomes the mystery at the heart of their family." Gutcheon also reminds us of how little Sydney understands about her husband's inner life. Is the Moss marriage a product of its generation? Do contemporary couples have different expectations of love and relationships?
12. How does Gutcheon's use of Dundee in this novel compare to her use of it in More Than You Know? What makes Maine an appropriate setting for both books?
About the Author
Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania and earned a bachelor's degree with honors in English literature from Harvard. Her six previous novels include Still Missing, which was made into the feature film Without a Trace. She has also written several film scripts, and the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine.
In the back of a closet in the upstairs hall, Eleanor opens an ancient garment bag and finds a shapeless and tarnished handful of ribbons and tulle. She gives a shriek.
Monica and Jimmy emerge from back bedrooms. "What is that?"
"It's The Dress!"
"She kept it all these years?"
The three of them stare at it, the debutante dress of legend. It is more of a rag than the couture dream they had imagined. Eleanor puts it back on the hanger and zips it back up in its bag, where it will wait, ready to be called as evidence in a yet-to-be-settled case of outrage in which all the principal parties are now dead.
Although none of them has said so, what each of them most wants to take home is the houseguest book.
Monica finds it.
"I've decided," she calls from the dining room.
Eleanor comes in from the big living room where she has been scanning the bookshelves, and sees her sister holding the very thing she was looking for.
"Finders keepers," says Monica.
"Where was it?"
Jimmy is coming down the stairs.
"In there," says Monica, pointing to an antique tavern table their parents used as a sideboard. "In the drawer."
Jimmy walks in holding a framed picture of their father and mother sitting in the stern of The Rolling Stone. They are at anchor in some island cove, Burnt Coat, or Pretty Marsh. The sunset flares gold on the water behind them, and they are tanned and happy, holding cocktails and wearing sunglasses and smiles. Jimmy has been about to announce this as his choice when he sees the guest book in Monica's hand.
"I was looking for that!" he says.
"It turns out we all were," says Eleanor.
"Where was it?"
The sisters point to the tavern table.
"I say 'finders keepers,' " says Monica.
"Unless one of us owns the table." Their mother has employed her sunset years in wandering around the house promising things to people, often the same thing two or three times, and applying stickers delivering her orders from beyond the grave.
Eleanor kneels down to peer under the table. She pulls her head out and reaches for the glasses on a cord around her neck. She pokes her head under again and reads, " 'Property of James Brant Moss.' " She stands up and looks at her sister, and they both say, "Oh, surprise."
The funeral is over. The ashes, in matching urns, are on the mantelpiece. There is no way to know whose last will or testament is in force, so they have decided to close the house as always, and leave it for the winter. Next summer, when the flood tides of memories and mourning currently swamping them have receded, they will be better able to cope.
They have decided that each of them will take home one thing from Leeway for the winter, for comfort. They are going through the house somberly, saying their goodbyes in their different ways, each looking for one object that will keep the dead alive and close a little longer.
In the back of a closet in the upstairs hall, Eleanor opens an ancient garment bag and finds a shapeless and tarnished handful of ribbons and tulle. She gives a shriek.
Monica and Jimmy emerge from back bedrooms. "What is that?"
"It's The Dress!"
"She kept it all these years?"
The three of them stare at it, the debutante dress of legend. It is more of a rag than the couture dream they had imagined. Eleanor puts it back on the hanger and zips it back up in its bag, where it will wait, ready to be called as evidence in a yet-to-be-settled case of outrage in which all the principal parties are now dead.
Although none of them has said so, what each of them most wants to take home is the houseguest book.
Monica finds it.
"I've decided," she calls from the dining room.
Eleanor comes in from the big living room where she has been scanning the bookshelves, and sees her sister holding the very thing she was looking for.
"Finders keepers," says Monica.
"Where was it?"
Jimmy is coming down the stairs.
"In there," says Monica, pointing to an antique tavern table their parents used as a sideboard. "In the drawer."
Jimmy walks in holding a framed picture of their father and mother sitting in the stern of The Rolling Stone. They are at anchor in some island cove, Burnt Coat, or Pretty Marsh. The sunset flares gold on the water behind them, and they are tanned and happy, holding cocktails and wearing sunglasses and smiles. Jimmy has been about to announce this as his choice when he sees the guest book in Monica's hand.
"I was looking for that!" he says.
"It turns out we all were," says Eleanor.
"Where was it?"
The sisters point to the tavern table.
"I say 'finders keepers,' " says Monica.
"Unless one of us owns the table." Their mother has employed her sunset years in wandering around the house promising things to people, often the same thing two or three times, and applying stickers delivering her orders from beyond the grave.
Eleanor kneels down to peer under the table. She pulls her head out and reaches for the glasses on a cord around her neck. She pokes her head under again and reads, " 'Property of James Brant Moss.' " She stands up and looks at her sister, and they both say, "Oh, surprise."
Leeway Cottage
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Hear our exclusive audio interview with Beth Gutcheon (13:04).
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