The Sunday List of Dreams

November 20, 2006
With her retirement looming, nurse Connie Nixon is preparing a "list of dreams" to accomplish once she's out of the working week. Revised 48 times by her retirement date, Connie's structured quest to let loose provides the opportunity for Radish (Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral
) to spin an inspirational story about making amends and the power of mother-daughter love. Connie's list contains run-of-the mill things like "stop setting the alarm clock" and "write more thank-you notes" and mildly daring to-do's like buying a convertible and drinking wine before noon. It is, however, the confluence of two list items, "maybe sex" and "recapture Jessica," that pushes Connie to rejuvenate her relationship with youngest daughter Jessica, who moved from hometown Indiana to New York three years ago and has since become the "CEO and part owner of... one of the most successful sex-toy stores in the United States of America." Connie travels to the Big Apple, and the two women reconnect in an unexpected way: Jessica puts Connie to work in the sex toy business. Every page contains a warm fuzzy.

December 15, 2006
Connie Nixon has retired after 32 years of nursing and is ready to address her list of dreams. The thought excites and scares her. In the midst of selling her house, she opens boxes belonging to her estranged oldest daughter, Jessica, who lives in New York City, and finds that Jessica acted on her dream: she owns a sex-aid store for women. Connie leaves her small Indiana town and flies to New York to reconnect with her daughter, the first step in altering Connie's life. Soon her strait-laced life is dismantled as Connie experiences her own personal sexual revolution with the guidance of her daughter, and she has the time of her life. Radish provides her readers with what they expect and will relish--a paean extolling the virtues of sisterhood that encompasses mothers and daughters and a rallying cry encouraging women to seek sexual fulfillment at any age.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)