Willa’s Grove

By: Laura Munson

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 11 hrs

Publisher's Summary

You are invited to the rest of your life.

Three women, from coast to coast and in between, open their mailboxes to the same intriguing invitation. Although leading entirely different lives, each has found herself at a similar, jarring crossroads. Right when these women thought they’d be comfortably settling into middle age, their carefully curated futures have turned out to be dead ends. 

The sender of the invitation is Willa Silvester, who is reeling from the untimely death of her beloved husband and the reality that she must say goodbye to the small mountain town they founded together. Yet as Willa mourns her losses, an impossible question keeps staring her in the face: So now what? 

Struggling to find the answer alone, fiercely independent Willa eventually calls a childhood friend who happens to be in her own world of hurt - and that’s where the idea sparks. They decide to host a weeklong interlude from life, and invite two other friends facing their own quandaries. Soon the four women converge at Willa’s Montana homestead, a place where they can learn from nature and one another as they contemplate their second acts together in the rugged wilderness of big sky country.

©2020 Laura Munson (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

What a fabulous book

I adored this book. It was an excellent exploration of the question of “what next” for each of the characters who were all at a midlife crossroads but who truly faced different futures from their last and from each other. Her writing was captivating and gripping, and I was swept up in the emotional journey. It was both cathartic and healing. I highly recommend it, and the narrator was outstanding.

Curl up and shelter in place in Montana

This beautifully written book will have you considering your own “So now what?” at this unprecedented moment in time. Our current pandemic affects the entire planet. And when it lifts, survivors will emerge from sheltering in place to a world disrupted. Substitute pandemic with more personal major life events and see how Laura Munson illustrates these women, raw and yearning having survived their own disrupted lives. Absent spouses from death, divorce, or divergent interests, an upended career, these women transform from anguish to acceptance, from utter despair to hope. They come to trust their hearts as they begin to know, love, and accept themselves with the same honesty they afford each other. Through a shared lens, options and opportunities surface with tentative optimism nurtured by each woman wanting the best for each other.

At a time when we are removed from our communities and yearn for connection, Willa’s Grove demonstrates the need for real friends, supportive friends who speak their truths and create space to hold each heart and soul. You’ll find yourself welcomed into Willa’s farmhouse to enjoy the sustenance of tea or homebrew as you observe bonds being formed—starting with one friend who brings another friend and that one brings another, comprising the diverse foursome of Jane, Bliss, Willa, and Harriet.

It all starts with an invitation — to the rest of your life. The timing is perfect to join this foursome and then create your own.

BORING

I had such high hopes for this book and I listened more than half way through it but it was sooooo boring! There was some good parts but it was lacking. I love Xe Sands but she just about lulled me to sleep.

Don’t bother

Slow, dull as nails. The reader sounded like an octogenarian rather than a 40- something.

Rather drawn out

I thought I would enjoy this more, but I became rather bored halfway through and skipped to almost the end. I loved the idea but it was rather drawn out.