We first met Lavinia Dugan's family in Anne Leigh Parrish's fantastic book of linked stories Our Love Could Light the World.

We catch up with Lavinia in Anne Leigh Parrish's marvelous novel, The Amendment, where Lavinia now-Starkhurt has to deal with the sudden death of her older husband Chip, struck down by lightning on the golf course. Chip was Lavinia's second husband and generous stepfather to her five children.

Chip loved Lavinia, and Lavinia loved Chip, even if he didn't excite her as much as her ex-husband Potter. When she and Potter were married, he couldn't hold down a job and he drank too much. Chip owned his own company, where Lavinia worked before she married Chip, and provided a lifestyle for Lavinia that enabled her to lead a life of leisure.

After Chip's death, Lavinia decides to leave her Finger Lakes region home and take a road trip across the country. She needs to get away from Mel, Chip's golfing buddy who loves Lavinia, and Alma, Chip's housekeeper who adored Chip (but not Lavinia). After her daughter Angie's attempt to get Lavinia to participate in group grief therapy goes terribly awry (Lavinia says some very inappropriate things), Lavinia hops in her car and takes off.

Along her travels, Lavinia picks up random items as totems of a sort- a stuffed teddy bear, a thimble collection she finds at garage sale, and a vase for the fresh flowers she buys every day. She stays at small motels along the way that have a diner nearby.

She meets people on her journey, listens to their stories and tries to help them, which is unlike her. She gives rides to people who need her help: a woman who was abandoned by her boyfriend at the laundromat, a teenager on the run from his uncles.

Lavinia stays for awhile at the home of her ex-sister-in-law. Patty and her husband Murph take her in and Lavinia stays for a few weeks, working for a few hours at a flower shop, trying to get a volunteer job as a driver for social services (until a previous DUI is discovered), and even has an affair with a cowboy.

I found Lavinia to be a fascinating, multi-dimensional character. She reminded me a bit of Olive Kitteridge from Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize novel of the same name. She is prickly and speaks her mind whether people want to hear it or not. She wasn't the best mother, maybe not affectionate enough. She wasn't the best wife to Chip, realizing that she married two men who were afraid of her. Some people call her a "straight-shooter", and she describes herself as a bitch.

I powered through The Amendment, turning the pages furiously because I couldn't get enough of Lavinia. She is funny and fierce and truly one of the most interesting characters I have found in a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed taking to the road with Lavinia and I highly recommend The Amendment. ( )

When I read Anne Leigh Parrish's first book, a collection of linked short stories called Our Love Could Light the World, I got to meet the messy and dysfunctional Dugan clan. In her new novel, The Amendment, mother Lavinia Dugan, now Lavinia Starkhurst and married to second husband Chip, has a whole different life. She's now in her 50s and her children are adults. She is more than comfortable financially. And she and her husband have an easy, generally considerate, if not passionate and love-filled, marriage. When Chip is struck by lightning on the golf course and dies, Lavinia's whole existence is thrown for a loop. She's confused by her grief and by the expectations others have for her in the wake of Chip's death. She feels like she needs to take a physical trip to process and make sense of everything so she sets off alone on a road trip, heading West without any particular plan, and along the way, ends up meeting strangers, down and out, struggling, and sometimes eccentric, whose lives she touches and who, in turn, touch her life.

Lavinia is a flawed and entirely human character. She can be judgmental and unkind, surprising given her own acknowledged background, but she can also be giving and forgiving, especially with her children, several of whom certainly struggle with navigating adulthood. While she seems content with who she is or thinks she is and initially uninterested in changing, she quickly realizes she doesn't really know who the real Lavinia is outside of the role she took on as Chip's wife. She'll have to change to find herself at her core. She is funny and sarcastic and grieving the loss of her husband in a way only she understands. But she is also doing the hard work of learning who she is, who she wants to be, and how she wants the rest of her life to proceed. In the process, this strong, resilient woman opens her heart a sliver at a time. Her insights into herself are realistic and her growth as a person is not overdone; change is incremental. The writing is very accessible and the pacing is consistent and appropriate. There is a nice balance of humor and pathos, with the humor dominating and keeping the mood of the novel, focused as it is on a new widow, from becoming overwhelmingly sad. Lavinia sometimes seems to treading water both before and during the trip, as people do, but there is never any doubt that this outspoken, determined woman will in fact find the road she needs to travel into the next phase of her life. If you like road trip novels, novels where women find their future, or novels of emotional resilience peppered with humor, this is the novel for you. ( )

This is my first book by Anne Leigh Parrish but after reading The Amendment, I plan to order some of her previous books. When I read the synopsis of this book, I was afraid that it was going to be a dark depressing book -- it was absolutely the opposite. The main character Lavania is a funny and sarcastic woman who can also be very introspective and extremely kind and caring.

When Lavania's second husband dies, she doesn't appear to be very sad over it. It didn't sound as if they had a great love but that he was someone comfortable for her to be with after the fiasco of her first marriage. To deal with his death, she decides to go on a road trip. Much to her children and her friends dismay, she sets off by herself heading west with no real plans in mind. Along the way she meets with people and ends up in situations that she has to take care of. Will this road trip teach her to be accepting of herself and the life she has created?

First off, I love books with older women as main characters. I get tired of reading about women in their 20s who haven't really faced life yet. Lavania is a great character - I laughed with her and even shed a few tears with her and she learned to navigate her new life as a widow.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own. ( )

I really liked this book. It tells how one person and her family handles the grief that each feels when someone dies. Everybody grieves in their own way. The amendment focuses on one character and what she finds out about herself - the good, the bad and the ugly as they say - during the first few weeks of her grief. ( )

From the Goodreads description: “When Lavinia Starkhurst’s husband is killed in a freak accident, she takes to the open road and meets a number of strangers, all with struggles of their own. Through these unexpected and occasionally hilarious encounters, Lavinia reflects on her past deeds, both good and bad, explores her two marriages, her roles as caregiver and wife, hoping all the while for self-acceptance and something to give her new life meaning.”

I had high expectation for The Amendment, both from the description of the book and from some reviews I had read. I was, however, very disappointed with this story and found it hard to even finish. Perhaps there was some symbolism or hidden meaning I missed, but it was not an enjoyable read for me.

At first I thought the author’s objective in the beginning was to make you so thoroughly dislike Lavinia that the contrast when she embarked on her journey of self-discovery and began her new life would be even more striking than you would expect. Well, the author succeeds with the disliking part, but unfortunately that continued for me until the end of the story. I kept waiting for Lavinia to become empathetic or sympathetic or even just let up with the nasty thoughts for a while, but all she became was more annoying. Even though she has been through a lot in her life and survived it, I couldn’t feel sorry for her; instead I felt sorry for everyone she came in contact with. Maybe she is intended to be witty and ironic, super spunky and sarcastic, but her behavior is consistently shallow, mean and often cruel. Even her thoughts are ugly more often than not. At the end of the story she seems exactly as she was in the beginning.

As I said, I had high expectations for The Amendment and looked forward to reading it. Although the story is not really similar, the book My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley’s made me think it succeeded where The Amendment failed – presenting characters who are also shallow, opinionated, judgmental, and act superior, sarcastic and a bit pathetic, but they have heart and soul and humanness; in the end they are fundamentally good people who care about others and act on that. Lavinia, on the other hand, is comfortable in her own skin. When she sees what she’s done to others her response is a shrug: “Oh well.” Ultimately that’s how I felt about this book – oh, well. I received an advance copy of The Amendment from LibraryThing via Smashwords in exchange for an honest review. ( )