“My karma ran over my dogma.”

Probably a familiar feeling to many of us, as it is to Carmen, Tibby, Lena, and Bridget, otherwise known as The Sisterhood. The fifteen year olds embark on their first summer apart and promise to share one magical pair of jeans that mysteriously fits their different body shapes and somehow transforms them into better/stronger versions of themselves. That’s how they feel, anyway, as they head of on their separate adventures with a list of rules governing the use of the traveling pants over the summer.

Rule # 2 You must never double-cuff the Pants. It’s tacky. There will never be a time when this will not be tacky.

Lena, the quiet beauty, travels to Greece for a visit with her paternal grandparents. She recognizes her own arrogance, finds love, and learns about communication and responsibility. Bridget, the blond, fearless athlete, goes to soccer camp and recognizes that bold actions sometimes have severe, irreparable consequences. Carmen, the spirited and sensitive Latina, sees her father in a new light and learns to be empathetic during her visit to South Carolina. Tibby, the introverted filmmaker, stays home in Bethesda, Maryland with plans to make a “suckmentary”, but ends up building a new friendship and learning to live life to the fullest.

First time novelist Ann Brashares shares four perspectives on life that extend far beyond the teenage characters that we meet. Sisterhood is a touching story - - interspersed with clever quotes - - that explores love, fear, insecurity, joy, and death with delicacy and introspection. With the comfortable, traveling jeans as the fifth character in the story, the reader, regardless of age, is taken on a wonderful summer vacation that will provoke laughter, tears, a hope for a better tomorrow, and the knowledge that it will come.

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brashares’ follow-up is The Second Summer of the Sisterhood.