The Ending Of Firefly Lane

The Firefly Lane Girls are now entering the age of thirty, and it is amazing to see the difference in the type of life that Kate leads compared to Tully's life. Kate ends up marrying Johnny, however, throughout the book the reader will see that she occasionally doubts herself that he truly loves her and she continues to believe that Johnny is not over Tully. She also ends up having three children named Marah, William and Lucas. Despite the fact that Kate never really pursued a career and simply told everyone that she was a stay at home mom, Kate still fins happiness and joy in her life by helping her kids and being their as a volunteer at school functions or charity events. However, Tully ends up pursuing her career as a news reporter and ends up becoming very wealthy and famous. She takes offers from large corporations and even accepted a deal where she films a live talk show called The Girlfriend Hour. Tully continuously finds herself unsatisfied with her life because she feels alone and wants to share a life with someone. Tully is scared of falling in love and can never understand why. Tully believed that being successful and famous would make her happy, but she ends up feeling abandoned and empty like before.

As the novel progresses, we see the different lifestyles that Tully and Kate leave end up putting a strain on their relationship. Tully spends most of her time in New York filming for her show while Kate spends her time with her family and taking care of her children. Another strain that is put on their relationship is Marah. When Marah enters the preteen years, Kate finds it hard to manage the constant battles that emerge about curfew, clothes and friends. However, Marah tends to force Tully to talk to Kate and Johnny and persuade them so that she could be granted permission to go somewhere or participate in an event. For example, Marah becomes interested in modeling and ends up taking a modeling class. However, one day in class Marah finds out that the class had been invited to go to New York for a week at a costly price. Marah tells Tully about it, who then ends up offering to pay for the trip and to also escort her to New York as well. Kate was furious that Tully would agree to something that was dangerous for a thirteen year old to do. Kate constantly reminds her that Tully is not her mom and that Kate's responsibility is to keep her daughter safe. Also, Kate becomes tired of Tully never apologizing for her actions and how she never will call first to resolve a situation. All of these factors lead to their relationship becoming estranged, which will lead to problems later on when Kate develops inflammatory breast cancer. Tully ends up feeling so much regret for the time that they did not spend together, and how she should have apologized and called Kate back when she called her months ago to tell her she was in surgery. However, Kate reminds her that they should leave the past in the past, and just live in the present.

Kristin Hannah has a distinctive writing style and she had done a wonderful job in developing Tully and Kate. Even the minor characters in the novel, such as Johnny and the children, Kristin had developed so well that the reader will end up feeling as if they know the Ryan family and some mothers can connect to the struggle that Kate has with managing her kids. One writing technique that I found particularly interesting of Kristin Hannah's was how the passage in the prologue of the novel ended up being repeated later on the novel during the time when Kate and Tully were in an argument. Typically, if a writer is going to repeat a certain passage in the novel, the writer will mention the passage in the beginning and then in the end. New before have I seen a passage in a book where it was mentioned in the prologue and then mentioned in the middle of the novel. I think that Kristin Hannah purposely placed the passage in the beginning of the novel because she wanted the reader to get a sense about the book was going to be about and then she probably mentioned it in the end in order for us to understand that the questions we may have had in the beginning had been answered. In the prologue, I was left wondering what exactly happened with Kate and Tully' relationship, and about halfway into the novel, I was able to answer the question. Kate being a guest appearance with Marah on Tully's show ended up not going well because Kate was unhappy with the fact that Tully was calling her a bad mother on television and Tully did not like how Kate mentioned facts about her personal life on television. Thus, this then led to Tully and Kate not talking for awhile until Kate got sick and needed to see Tully again. One quote that shows how Kate is dealing with cancer is when Kristin Hannah writes "She woke with a start, feeling tears on her cheeks. She lay there in her bed, wide awake now, listening to a winter storm rage outside. In the last week she'd lost the ability to distance herself from her memories. Too often lately she returned to Firefly Lane in her dreams, and no wonder. Best friends forever. That was the promise they'd made all those years ago, and they'd believed it would last, believed that someday they'd be old women together, sitting in their rocking chairs on a creaking deck, talking about the times of their lives, and laughing. Now she knew better of course. For more than a year she'd been telling herself that it was okaym that she could go on without her best friend. Sometimes she even believed it. Then she'd hear the music. Their music. Yesterday, while she'd been shopping, a bad Muzak version of "You've Got a Friend" had made her cry, right there next to the radishes." From this quote the reader is able to gather that Kate is having a difficult time dealing with the cancer because even though she has her family's support she still misses the time she spent with her friend. Tully also demonstrates that she feels regret for what she did to Kate on the show when she says to Kate "I'm sorry, Katie," she whispered, hearing how small the words were; all her life she'd hoarded those few those few and simple words, kept them tucked inside her heart as if to them out would harm her. Why, of all the lessons she should have learned from her mother, had she held on to this most hurtful one? And why hadn't she called when she'd heard Kate's voice on the answering machine? "I'm so sorry," she said again, feeling the burn of tears." Basically, the reader can then see that Tully feels a huge amount of regret for not calling Kate back and that she had overcome her fear of saying "I'm sorry." This is significant progress for Tully because it is showing that she is starting to forget about what her mother had done to her and how she will try to move on and become a stronger person than she was. Tully ended up trying to help restore the relationship with her mother, but it ended up not working because her mother ended up in the hospital and said to her that she was not good enough to be Tully's mother and that she wishes she could be what Tully needed growing up but she was unable to provide the care that she needed.

While reading this book, I found that it did take me a longer time then I had expected. However, I just thought the idea of following your dreams and being successful was a powerful topic that the author explored in this novel. It really made me think that even if someone can become sucessful, it does not necessarily mean they will always be happy. I learned that it is important to aprreciate the little things in life, just like Kate did, because that is what you will always remember. As Kate had written in her journal "That's the funny thing about writing your life story. You start out trying to remember dates and times and names. You think it's about facts, your life, that what you'll look back on and remember are the successes and failures, the time line of your youth and middle age, but that isn't all. Love. Family. Laughter. That's what I remember when it's all said and done. For so much of my life I thought I didn't do enough or want enough. I guess I can be forgiven for my stupidity. I was young. I want my children to know how proud I am of them, and how proud I am of me. We were everything we needed-you and Daddy and I. I had everything I ever wanted. Love. That's what we remember."

I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy books that take place over a long span of time and follow people as they grow and develop. This was an amazing book that teaches readers a very valueable lesson-success does not always make you happy.