The Thinking Woman's Travel Guide To True North

Life long friends, Tally and Barbie struggle with loveless marriages, life and challenges of motherhood. They long for a satisfying committed relationship like their friend, Lissie, has with husband Cesar. Barbie narrates their story as they discover their own strengths and confront personal limitations while they navigate through the stormy seas of life. She recounts how they met when they were girls and the way their friendship developed around Tally's intellectual English professor father and his spiritual Native American friends who introduce the girls to an extremely different culture. Then, there is Tally's extended Polish-American family who can always be counted on to have the most interesting ideas regarding settling issues with neighbors.
The girls learn to meditate and to effectively differentiate between rhetoric and reasoning. As adults, they promise not to give in to their own inadequacies, though everyone protects Tally from traumatic memories whenever there is a funeral. Even though life is more difficult than they imagined, they continue to celebrate their accomplishments and remain closer than most sisters. Tally has stage presence, Lissie is clever with words and Barbie is just plain sensible.
Beautiful women have no problems attracting men. Clever, intelligent women often intimidate all but the most self-assured men. But women who have healed from loveless marriages need more than ordinary male attention. To succeed and gain their respect, a man's primary job is to encourage her to trust him by making her feel loved and deeply cherished. In return, she will feed him the sweetness of life, which is very delicious, indeed.
The men our heroines choose have one thing in common: It requires a grand gesture to win these capable, unique, women. It takes self-examination, self-awareness and the proper motivation to keep them happy.