Life: A Love Story

Bestseller Berg (Earth’s the Right Place for Love) serves up a deceptively simple story with hidden depths. Flo Greene, 92 and widowed with no children, has been given a four-to-six-week prognosis for her terminal cancer. She writes a long letter to her close friend Ruthie, a young woman who grew up next door and was like a daughter to her. Ruthie is married with children but is considering divorce, and Flo announces her intention to leave her modest house to Ruthie. As the letter unfolds over the length of the novel, alternating with sections of third-person narration, Flo reminisces about Ruthie’s childhood and adolescence and pointedly chronicles her own ups and downs with her late husband. Meanwhile, when Flo is not writing her letter, she befriends neighbor Teresa McNair, a death doula who helps people cope with the end of their lives. Flo, saddened by Teresa’s resignation to singlehood at 51, helps her navigate online dating. Berg exhibits great range in her portrayal of the folksy Flo, whose sweetness is far from saccharine; she believes in being honest and forthright, as when she steers Teresa away from talk of a miraculous recovery from her cancer, thinking after all she’s 92, and “her doctor is not a dope.” Readers will be charmed by this heartening tale. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Mar.)