What Matters Most
Luanne Rice, 2007
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553386868
Summary
Sister Bernadette Ignatius has returned to Ireland in the company of Tom Kelly to search for the past—and the son—they left behind. For it was here that these two long-ago lovers spent a season of magic before Bernadette’s calling led her to a vocation as Mother Superior at Star of the Sea Academy on the sea-tossed Connecticut shore.
For Tom, Bernadette’s choice meant giving up his fortune and taking the job as caretaker at Star of the Sea, where he could be close to the woman he could no longer have but whom he never stopped loving. And while one miracle drew them apart, another is about to bring them together again.
For somewhere in Dublin a young man named Seamus Sullivan is also on a search, dreaming of being reunited with his own first love, the only “family” he’s ever known. They’d been inseparable growing up together at St. Augustine’s Children’s Home, until Kathleen Murphy’s parents claimed her and she vanished across the sea to America.
Now, in a Newport mansion, that very girl, grown to womanhood, works as a maid and waits with a faith that defies all reason for the miracle that will bring back the only boy she’s ever loved.
That miracle is at hand—but like most miracles, it can come only after the darkest of nights and the deepest of heartbreaks. For life can be as precarious as a walk along a cliff, and its greatest rewards reached only by those who dare to risk everything for what matters most. (From the publisher.
Author Bio
• Birth—September 25, 1955
• Where—New Britain, Connecticut, USA
• Education—Connecticut College (did not take a degree)
• Currently—lives in Lyme, Connecticut and New York City
Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author who has inspired the devotion of readers everywhere with her moving novels of love and family. She has been hailed by critics for her unique gifts, which have been described as "a beautiful blend of love and humor, with a little magic thrown in."
Rice began her writing career in 1985 with her debut novel Angels All Over Town. Since then, she has gone on to pen a string of heartwarming bestsellers. Several of her books have been adapted for television, including Crazy in Love, Blue Moon, Follow the Stars Home, and Beach Girls.
Rice was born in New Britain, Connecticut, where her father sold typewriters and her mother, a writer and artist, taught English. Throughout her childhood, Rice spent winters in New Britain and summers by Long Island Sound in Old Lyme, where her mother would hold writing workshops for local children. Rice's talent emerged at a very young age, and her first short story was published in American Girl Magazine when she was 15.
Rice later attended Connecticut College, but dropped out when her father became very ill. At this point, she knew she wanted to be a writer. Instead of returning to college, Rice took on many odd jobs, including working as a cook and maid for an exalted Rhode Island family, as well as fishing on a scallop boat during winter storms. These life experiences not only cultivated the author's love and talent for writing, but shaped the common backdrops in her novels of family and relationships on the Eastern seaboard. A true storyteller with a unique ability to combine realism and romance, Rice continues to enthrall readers with her luminous stories of life's triumphs and challenges.
In her words
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I take guitar lessons.
• I was queen of the junior prom. Voted in, according to one high school friend I saw recently, as a joke because my date and I were so shy, everyone thought it would be hilarious to see us onstage with crowns on our heads.
• I shared a room with both sisters when we were little, and I felt sorry for kids who had their own rooms.
• To support myself while writing in the early days, I worked as a maid and cook in one of the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. I'd learned to love to cook in high school, by taking French cooking from Sister Denise at the convent next door to the school. The family I worked for didn't like French cooking and preferred broiled meat, well done, and frozen vegetables.
• I lived in Paris. The apartment was in the Eighth Arrondissement. Every morning I'd take my dog for a walk to buy the International Herald Tribune and have coffee at a cafe around the corner. Then I'd go upstairs to the top floor, where I'd...write.... Living in another country gave me a different perspective on the world. I'm glad I realized there's not just one way to see things.
• While living there, I found out my mother had a brain tumor. She came to Paris to stay with me and have chemotherapy at the American Hospital. She'd never been on a plane before that trip. In spite of her illness, she loved seeing Paris. I took her to London for a week, and as a teacher of English and a lover of Dickens, that was her high point.
After she died, I returned to France and made a pilgrimage to the Camargue, in the South. It is a mystical landscape of marsh grass, wild bulls, and white horses. It is home to one of the largest nature sanctuaries in the world, and I saw countless species of birds. The town of Stes. Maries de la Mer is inspiring beyond words. Different cultures visit the mysterious Saint Sarah, and the presence of the faithful at the edge of the sea made me feel part of something huge and eternal. And all of it inspired my novel Light of the Moon.
• During that period I also wrote two linked books Summer's Child and Summer of Roses...and became involved with trying to help families affected by abuse in particular.... [I also worked with] Deborah Epstein's domestic violence clinic at Georgetown University Law Center.... A counselor recommended The Verbally Abusive Relationshipby Patricia Evans. It is life-changing, and I have given it to many women over the years.
• I became a vegetarian. I decided...I wanted only gentleness and peace in my life.... A friend reminds me of a great quote in the Zen tradition: "How you do anything is how you do everything.
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here's what she said:
[There] are two books. The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson and Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Carson's book is scientific and poetic, and it taught me that every single thing we do contributes to the harm or well-being of ourselves and the oceans, the world at large. It influenced me to incorporate my love of nature into my fiction.
Franny and Zooey Glass are two of the all-time great siblings of fiction. Nothing has ever inspired me more than being a sister; when I was young, the only stories I wanted to write were about sisters from a close, funny, secretive family like mine. The Glass family was quirky and eccentric in ways that felt very familiar to me.... Salinger loved his characters so much...[he] taught me to love my characters. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
True love never dies-but it may need the helping hand of the Virgin Mary and the luck o' the Irish to survive in Rice's latest, effectively a sequel to last year's Sandcastles. Sister Bernadette Ignatius (the former Bernie Sullivan), Mother Superior at the coastal Connecticut Star of the Sea Academy, travels to Dublin with Tom Kelly, the academy's ombudsman, seeking James, the son they gave up over 20 years ago. In a parallel narrative set up in a prologue, young James and Kathleen, raised together as orphans, are devastated when they are forced to separate when Kathleen is 13. While Bernie and Tom look for James (now calling himself Seamus), James searches for Kathleen, who pines for him in a Newport, R.I., mansion, where she is a cook and maid for an atrocious, wealthy family. Rice juices up the predictable plot line with miraculous visions, ghosts, convenient encounters and melodramatic twists of fate-yet the effects are still lukewarm, though there's guilt, redemption and three-hankie moments aplenty for those who stick it out to the end.
Publishers Weekly
An emotionally exhaustive revisit with the two Irish-American families from Sandcastles (2006). This time around, Rice turns her attention to Sister Bernadette (Bernie) Sullivan and Thomas (Tom) Kelly. Long before Sister Bernie took her vows, she and Tom were young lovers. While on a romantic holiday to Ireland connecting with their roots, Bernie and Tom shared a single night of passion. Bernie became pregnant. Tom wanted to keep the baby, but Bernie struggled between her calling to the church and her love for Tom. Ultimately, the baby was given up for adoption. Now, 20-odd years later, Tom and Bernie decide to fly to Dublin to track down their son, Seamus, and introduce themselves as his parents. At the reunion, Seamus wants nothing to do with the family that abandoned him and left him in a crowded orphanage. To make matters more complicated, the disastrous meeting stirs up old passions between Tom and Bernie. Their romantic detente ends and their friendship is irrevocably altered. Tom makes a final effort to win over Seamus before flying back to America. Grudgingly, Seamus accepts Tom's help when Tom offers to use his influence to reunite Seamus with his lost love from the orphanage. With Tom's help, Seamus tracks down his love in America. At this point, the plot spins wildly out of control as the author tosses in one melodramatic, outlandish event after another. Though a few new characters are sprinkled in, it's impossible to care about them. Rice, usually good at bringing to life the Irish landscape, this time falls flat.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the role of miracles in What Matters Most. Which miracles were mixed blessings? Which ones brought unconditional joy to those who experienced them? If you had witnessed Bernadette’s vision, how would you have interpreted the words she heard: “Love my son”?
2. How are family and home defined in What Matters Most? Who forged the strongest family ties? What sort of home life existed for those who inhabited St. Augustine’s Children’s Home, compared to Star of the Sea and the Wells home in Newport?
3. How did you feel about Sister Eleanor Marie after learning about her childhood? Are actions such as hers unforgivable?
4. Tom experienced a lifetime of longing for Bernadette, becoming the caretaker at Star of the Sea so that he could be near her. Kathleen and Seamus’s love remained strong despite years of physical separation. What kept these lovers devoted to each other, regardless of the circumstances? Which is more powerful: devotion or fate?
5. In your opinion, why did Kathleen sleep with Pierce? How did their trysts reflect the loneliness and despair that had defined so much of her life?
6. Discuss the dynamics of the Wells household. Who are the most powerful family members? Do women or men dominate the decision making? What standards do the Wellses use to measure happiness and fulfillment?
7. What does it mean to be a member of the Kelly family? How do Dublin’s monuments and the legend of the sea monster convey their special legacy? What do the stark differences between Seamus’s heritage and Kathleen’s tell us about the consequences of knowing our genealogical roots?
8. What is the effect of Honor and John’s story, and their family’s ability to experience redemption, in the midst of Bernadette’s ordeal?
9. What was the result of the reunions featured in the novel? How do they compare to the reunion scenes anticipated and hoped for by the characters? With which figures from your past would you most want to be reunited?
10. In chapter sixteen, Tom says he believes Bernadette is exempt from fully living in this world; her life as Mother Superior insulates her from real-life woes. What are the benefits and limitations of her life as a nun? How does she perceive this identity?
11. What transformations have taken place in Seamus by the time he sees the ghost? Would the younger Seamus have been able to accept such an experience, or to even hear the ghost’s message?
12. What had you predicted for Bernadette and Tom as they crossed paths with John and Honor in the closing scenes of Sandcastles? What aspects of Bernadette and Tom’s quest surprised you the most? In what way does What Matters Most underscore other aspects of yearning and healing in previous Luanne Rice novels you have read?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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