Do Me, Do My Roots

It's about healing.
After a couple of rough years, Emily is finally getting things back together. She doesn't need to re-do everything at work three times, her young daughter's soccer uniform is almost always clean the day of a game, and meals are pretty darn reliable, too. But hey, becoming a widow at thirty-three kind of knocks the starch out of you.
It's about family.
Then Emily's dad has an Event (only her mom would call a minor heart attack that -- what is it, a bar mitzvah?). Next, her sister Claudia's ex-husband starts stealing their kids' Ritalin for the high -- and wouldn't you replace it with The Pill to teach him a lesson? (His unexpected, uh, frontal development was just a howlingly funny bonus -- honest.) And then Emily's relentlessly sensible oldest sister, Leah, dumps her businessman fiancé for a rock musician.
It's about never letting them see your gray.
Now Jake, Emily's best friend, seems to be spending a lot of time at her house. Which she likes way too much. Which is kind of confusing. So what's a girl to do, but call an emergency meeting of the sisters' monthly hair-color-and-gossip session, to make the world seem sane again?

Eileen Rendahl is the author of the Downtown Press novels Balancing in High Heels and Do Me, Do My Roots, which was nominated for a RITA Award. Her short fiction appears in the New Year's story collection In One Year and Out the Other. She lives near her tight-knit family in California.