Good Harbor is the second novel by best-selling author Anita Diamant. Diamant is a prizewinning journalist who writes articles for the Boston Globe Magazine and Parenting.You may recognize her name from her first book, a surprise bestseller called The Red Tent. While Good Harbor is not "bestseller" material, the story is a warm one that many will enjoy. This book explores the intricacies of motherhood, marriage, career, friendship and even faith.

The setting for Good Harbor is the town of Gloucester on Cape Ann in Massachusetts, in the present day. This town is an ideal ocean village, complete with a village store and neighbors who know everything about you. Actually, this is probably the author's strongest asset: being able to describe the beautiful scenery so well that the reader can nearly smell the salty sea air. The reader gets a feel for the town and its people immediately.

Good Harbor chronicles the new friendship of two women who have an amazing amount in common. Kathleen Levine is a fifty-nine-year-old longtime resident of Gloucester. She is married to a wonderful man and has two grown sons. She has also just found out that she has breast cancer, the disease that killed her beloved sister, Pat, fifteen years earlier. She is confused, frightened, and in the unique position of having no one who truly understands what she is going through. She is the sort of person who finds it very difficult to talk about her problems or her personal life to anyone.

She meets Joyce Tabachnik and becomes fast friends with her. Joyce is a freelance writer for several magazines, and has even made a tidy sum penning a romance novel, which embarrasses her completely. Joyce is forty, and at a very tumultuous time in her life: her twelve-year-old daughter is becoming a teenager and seems to have turned into a demon's spawn over night and her husband works long hours and has continued to grow distant from her. With her earnings from the embarrassing romance novel, they purchase a very small vacation home in Gloucester, which she hopes will become a source of inspiration for future novels.

The two women who seem to be in crisis together realize that they share a love of books, and an appreciation for the small, but beautiful town, so they begin to take morning walks along the Good Harbor beach. As they walk, an easy camaraderie develops between the two that eventually becomes a deep and life-changing friendship as time moves along. They share secrets and personal histories and begin to help each other through disturbing past mistakes so that healing can finally begin.

Secondary characters include Buddy, Kathleen's devoted husband. He is painted as a strong-silent type who never discusses the obvious problems or tragedies in their lives. We are made aware of, time and again, his devotion to Kathleen as he watches over her like a parent and never questions her when she asks him to drop her off to pick up a car for Joyce "and never ask her why."

Frank, who is Joyce's husband, is probably the most intriguing of all the secondary characters. We spend the entire book trying to determine why he is avoiding Joyce and their vacation home in Gloucester. We are lead to believe throughout the book that he may be up to something shady.

The children are also important to the story. Nina is Joyce and Frank's only daughter and she is twelve. We are given the description of a brooding and irritated preteen who thinks only of herself: pretty typical of this age. Nina and her parent's relationship becomes quite shaky and Joyce tries hard to remember how hard they tried to have her and how much they really wanted her.

Hal and Pat are Kathleen's two sons who are supportive and wonderful to her. It is mentioned in the book that Hal is suspected by Kathleen and Buddy to be gay, but that turns out not to be so. It was a bit odd and choppy that this was thrown into the book at all, it seemed as if it just didn't fit.

Besides making the reader more aware of breast cancer, this book briefly touches on Kathleen developing anxiety attacks when she begins treatment for the breast cancer. It seems that driving over bridges terrifies her now, to the point that she actually throws up! Then, as she begins to heal from letting out some of her well-kept secrets to Joyce, she magically overcomes her terror and begins to drive and live normally again. Since my mother and sister suffer from panic disorder, I know that it is not that simple to just "snap out of it" so this was a touch unreal for me. But hey, this is a book, not a medical journal, so I can't downgrade it for that!

This book almost lost me quite a few times. Even though it is an easy read, I wondered when we were finally going to get where we were going. When the "secrets" were finally divulged at the end of the book, I must say that I couldn't help but feel a little disgusted by these two women. Perhaps if you read the book, you will feel I'm being a bit harsh here, but I found it hard to attach myself to them. They both seemed like bored housewives with too much money and time on their hands. The story was nice, but some of the mistakes and choices they made seemed very out of character. Perhaps that is the point the author was trying to make?

Another point I'd address was that these characters were so similar that I found myself having difficulty keeping track of them. I had to constantly think about who was who, which was disconcerting.

At any rate, I will grudgingly recommend this book because it did hold my interest until the end, but I will most definitely check out The Red Tent which got much higher marks from critics.

Recommended: Yes