I felt that regret when I finished Forever in Blue (Random House 2007), the fourth of Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Random House 2003) books. I loved those books, and when Forever in Blue ended, I allowed myself to mourn, for it seemed that Brashares really had drawn the final curtain: The Pants, after all, were gone.
But wait! Hope springs eternal, as they say, and I was delighted recently to find that Brashares had decided to resurrect the series with 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (Random House 2009), a new novel about three new girls--Jo, Polly, and Ama--who are destined to pick up the torch dropped by Bridget, Tibby, Carmen, and Lena.
The circumstances are different. The three have not been lifelong bosom buddies like the original Sisters. Jo, Polly, and Ama were best friends for a few years in elementary school, when they planted willows together in the woods and visited them every day, but in middle school they abandoned the trees and one another. The summer between eighth and ninth grades, however, gives them a chance to remember why they need each other. (Brashares, like so many writers and readers of YA lit., loves the promise and potential of summers, and she fulfills them beautifully.)
Jo, Polly, and Ama live in Bethesda and are about to enter the same high school the Septembers attended, and indeed, the Septembers do brush against the edges of the story. The Pants have made them local legends, and our three new heroines remember how they and other girls tried to copy the magic without success.
Now, Polly babysits for Tibby's younger siblings, and poor Jo's summer job at the beach turns disastrous when Lena's sister Effie shows up. But this is the story of the Willows, not the Pants; of friendship reignited, not uninterrupted; of ties strengthened through growth alone, not magic.
Maybe Ann Brashares really had planned to lay this series to rest after Forever in Blue. Perhaps the muse or her fans or her publisher just wouldn't let her. Whatever happened, I am so grateful for it. And I am also excited, because those final dregs of story left an aftertaste that hints, subtly but unmistakably, of more to come.
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