Peggy Webb Flying Lessons

Flying Lessons

Peggy Webb

Harlequin Next, May 2006, $5.50

ISBN: 0373880928

Fifty-three years old Beth Holt Martin think her life stinks as she is bored of being the dull spouse of nice psychiatrist Dr. Howard Martin. She knows there has to be more to life and that her feelings of discontentment have nothing to do with the empty nest that she now rules over. However, what makes everything hit home is a d j vu observation of her oldest daughter reliving her life

Beth decides to find the missing woman she once was by seeking out the dreams she had in her youth. She leaves Howard behind on a quest to seek her lost soul for she plans to spread her wings and fly solo though at the end of the rainbow she may come back to Howard; assuming he waits for her.

The key that makes FLYING LESSONS a sensational character study is not the heroine seeking her wings, but the support cast; Howard and the kids are nice people so that Beth's dissatisfaction with life cannot be blamed on negativity by them. Instead the people in her life depend on her as they know she is a loving person. Thus when the fiftyish Beth wonders what happened to her dreams and begins an allegorical quest to find them, the audience obtains a well written deep drama of people doing the best they could while making solid choices that seem right then but years later haunt them with what if. Peggy Webb writes a wonderful tale that the contemporary crowd will devour.

Harriet Klausner