Sisterchicks Go Brit!
Read Sisterchicks Go Brit! Online
Authors: Robin Jones Gunn
The Sisterchicks Series
“Robin has done it again! You and your Sisterchicks will love taking this new adventure together.”
—K
AREN
K
INGSBURY
,
New York Times
best-selling
author of
Between Sundays
and
Ever After
“Get ready for a wild ride through the back streets of Oxford and London’s busy underground.
Sisterchicks Go Brit!
is a joy to read and a delightful reminder that it’s never too late in life to take a risk. You’ll be cheering as these women dare to follow their hearts and be inspired to revive the dreams lying dormant in your own heart. Thanks, Robin, for treating us to another Sisterchicks adventure full of friendship, faith, and fun.”
—M
ELANIE
D
OBSON
, author of
Going for Broke
and
The Black Cloister
“My only complaint about Robin’s latest is that now I want to hop a plane to England! But combine a cup of Earl Grey tea and this charming story, and you’re halfway there. Another delightful tale about women helping women to live their lives to the fullest.”
—M
ELODY
C
ARLSON
, author of
These Boots Weren’t
Made for Walking
and
A Mile in My Flip-Flops
“Funny, touching, and true to life,
Sisterchicks Do the Hula!
will have you doing the hula (and loving it!) by the last page. Grab your grass skirt, girlfriend—this is one trip you don’t want to miss! Robin Jones Gunn is the perfect tour guide for this joy-filled Hawaiian adventure. You’ll feel the sand between your toes, taste sweet pineapple juice, see amazing rainbows—all without having to put on a bathing suit! Your travel partners, two turning-forty chicks, will feel like old friends the minute you hit the beach.”
—L
IZ
C
URTIS
H
IGGS
, best-selling author of
Bookends
,
Mixed Signals
, and
Grace in Thine Eyes
“Sisterchicks in Gondolas!
is a true delight. The characters shine, and evocative language will make any reader want to visit Venice. Biblical truths are portrayed simply yet will touch hearts and lives with their realistic application.”
—Romantic Times
magazine
“If you have a keen sense of adventure, you will love exploring the world with Robin Jones Gunn’s Sisterchicks series … The author makes sisterhood and friendship into an incredible treasure, and she uses Scripture in a way to challenge, uplift, and encourage the readers. This is an excellent read.”
—B
OOK
B
ARGAINS AND
P
REVIEWS
for
Sisterchicks
in Gondolas!
“Robin Jones Gunn makes traversing midlife seem almost welcoming because she has that rare gift of communicating hope amid trial and inner chaos. Robin has found an effective mode of gently lending some instruction to women who sometimes feel overwrought and undone by life’s unexpected curves. women and older teens will relish
Sisterchicks Down Under!
Who says growing older can’t be fun if you have a friend to share the journey?”
—F
AITHFUL
R
EADER.COM
S
ISTERCHICKS
G
O
B
RIT!
P
UBLISHED BY
M
ULTNOMAH
B
OOKS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked
(NIV)
are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version
®
. NIV
®
. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Other Scripture quotations on
this page
–
this page
are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Robin’s Nest Productions Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.
M
ULTNOMAH
and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gunn, Robin Jones, 1955-
Sisterchicks go Brit! : a novel / Robin Jones Gunn.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56143-5
1. Women travelers—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Americans—Great Britain—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.U4866S5627 2008
813′.54—dc22
2007047056
v3.1_r1
OTHER BOOKS BY ROBIN JONES GUNN
Sisterchicks® Devotional:
Take Flight!
Gardenias for Breakfast
Finding Father Christmas
S
ISTERCHICKS® NOVELS
Sisterchicks on the Loose!
Sisterchicks Do the Hula!
Sisterchicks in Sombreros!
Sisterchicks Down Under!
Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La!
Sisterchicks in Gondolas!
T
HE
G
LENBROOKE
S
ERIES
Secrets
Whispers
Echoes
Sunsets
Clouds
Waterfalls
Woodlands
Wildflowers
T
EEN
N
OVELS
The Christy Miller Series
The Sierra Jensen Series
Christy & Todd: The College Years
The Katie Weldon Series
G
IFT
B
OOKS
Tea at Glenbrooke
Mothering by Heart
Gentle Passages
For Julee and Marion
with “Sisterchicks Forever” memories
of our Oxford tour and teatime in Olney
Deep in your hearts you know
that every promise of the L
ORD
your God
has come true
.
Not a single one has failed!
J
OSHUA
23:14
S
ome dreams and wishes,
I believe, are of the dormant, time-released variety. They aren’t forgotten over many years or through many changes in life. They don’t shrink during their hibernation. They simply wait to come true when the dreamer and the wisher need to believe all over again.
Kellie and I definitely needed to believe all over again.
Kellie’s dream was to have an interior-design business.
My wish was to go to England. Ever since I was fifteen, I had wished I could stand on Westminster Bridge in London and gaze up into the golden face of Big Ben. Silly, I know. But that was my wish.
Never did either of us imagine that Kellie’s dream would overlap my wish when we were both fifty-four years old. We were, by our own unspoken rules, past the point in life at which one should venture out in a new direction.
But that was before we met Opal.
A bright-eyed, seventy-nine-year-old pixie of a woman, Opal slipped her silken hand into mine on the doorstep of her English cottage and said, “Elizabeth, my dear, do you know what the dearest kindness is that a woman can offer herself in the autumn of her years?”
I shook my head.
“It is the gift of giving herself permission to take risks.”
And then she winked at me.
That’s when I understood that sometimes a hibernating dream or a dormant wish must be ushered out of its cavelike sleeping chambers and nudged right up to the cliff’s edge of possibility. It must take a deep breath and step off the edge into nothing but untamed air. In that risk-taking moment, the wish just might discover its wings and fly. I’ve seen it happen.
I never would have known any of this if I hadn’t been late to meet Kellie for coffee two years ago. I dashed into Brew-La-La to escape the jellybean-sized drops of warm, Floridian rain.
Right behind me was a petite feather of a woman dressed in a bright green jogging set. She was shielded from the drops by a spotted gray umbrella, making her look like an overgrown mushroom.
I held the door for her and located Kellie across the café, ensconced in one of the cranberry red chairs in our usual corner. She waved to me with a beckoning “over here” sort of hand motion. The walking mushroom responded by striding across
the room and planting herself in the cranberry red chair intended for me.
In that moment my dormant wish was nudged toward the mouth of its cave, only I didn’t know it. Kellie’s dream was about to be ushered right to the cliff’s edge of reason, but she had no clue what was coming.
All I did was hold open the door. All Kellie did was wave. Everything else happened at a blink-of-an-eye speed after that.
Several months ago Kellie and I were retelling our story to one of Kellie’s clients. As usual, we started with the encounter at Brew-La-La. Kellie described the winsome way Opal walked through the open door and made herself at home in the middle of our lives.
Kellie’s client said, “She sounds like your fairy godmother in disguise.”
“Disguised as a mushroom,” I said and quickly added the description of Opal’s green “stem” and toadstool-colored umbrella.