Some Kind of Miracle

October 27, 2003
In this show-biz drama by the author of Beaches,
two first cousins and former best friends rekindle their friendship while struggling with questions of mental illness, genius and personal integrity. As teenagers, Sunny and Dahlia Gordon created an intense bond though a shared love of music. Sunny, five years older than Dahlia, is the wilder and by far the more creative of the two, and her talent inspires Dahlia to write lyrics. Their music is good, and their friendship singular, but when Sunny's eccentricities devolve into a dangerous mental illness and her well-meaning family can no longer cope with her, she is placed in a mental institution. The cousins lose contact with each other until 25 years later, when Dahlia is living in Los Angeles and earning a living as a masseuse while trying to sell her songs. Possessed of an ambitious pragmatism that allows her to slide easily into ethical lapses, Dahlia reconnects with Sunny, who is living in a halfway house in San Diego, in order to get a song out of her. From this point on, the women are together again, each helping the other find her way out of desperate situations. Dart keeps the story moving at a fast clip with generous helpings of weddings, funerals, sing-alongs and spontaneous disrobings of the (gorgeous) Sunny. These made-for-the-movies moments are balanced by Dahlia's acerbic wit, making this an entertaining if formulaic read.

October 1, 2004
Dahlia, Los Angeles masseuse and aspiring songwriter, hasn't penned a hit song in years. Just as her house and romantic relationship fall into disrepair, a rich but extremely repugnant film producer client mentions he needs a title song for his new movie Stay by My Side . Luckily for Dahlia, this was the title of a great song she wrote with her cousin Sunny, a schizophrenic she hasn't seen in 25 years. Dahlia dusts off the old reel-to-reel recording, copies it to a CD, and sends it off to the producer, who, of course, loves it. Contract in hand, Dahlia sets out to locate Sunny, whose signature she needs to close the deal. However, when she finds her cousin at a group home in San Diego, the years of antipsychotic medication have left her a shell of the vivacious young woman Dahlia remembers--and, to make matters worse, Sunny refuses to sell their song. Although the characters are memorable, the plot often crawls along--something exacerbated by the deliberate pace at which Moira Driscoll reads the novel. For large fiction collections.--Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., OH

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