True Colors by Kristin Hannah (Book Review by Melissa A. Bartell)
True Colors
Kristin Hannah
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In her last novel, Firefly Lane, which was released in paperback earlier this year, author Kristin Hannah gave us a stirring story exploring the often-adversarial relationships between mothers and daughters. In her newest book, True Colors Ms. Hannah once again displays her deftness at portraying relationships between women, this time with a brutally honest portrayal of three sisters in a somewhat dysfunctional family.
The story follows Winona, Aurora, and Vivi Ann Grey from the day after their mother’s funeral in 1979, when they are teenagers, through their adulthood, showing us the trials they must endure among themselves, an with the men who come into their lives.
As is typical of Hannah’s work, the women are the center of the story, and while each of the men we meet - childhood friend and point of contention Luke, somewhat disreputable Dallas, and their struggling, bitter father - is charismatic in his own way, they are secondary to the story, serving only to illustrate the ways the sisters change in their relationships with each other and the world.
Set in a small town on the Washington coast, and filled with horses, farmhands, cowboys, and all kinds of rugged individualist archetypes, in both male and female form, True Colors is, ultimately, the satisfying sort of read we expect from a woman with sixteen previous novels to her name.
Kristin Hannah does not disappoint. She finds the everywoman in all of us, and gives us characters who serve as the mirrors with which we see ourselves.
Melissa A. Bartell earns her living by writing articles for an SEO marketing firm, and dabbles in essays and fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Managing Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page. You can also find her at her website and various other places around the ‘net.
