Short description
James and Mauney, friends since the age of 12, record their unfolding lives from their mid-20s through their 40s. By giving sensitive support to each other at key moments, these two women both found their way to balancing marriage, motherhood, and creative careers.
Long description
Transplanting southern roots to southern Africa, Ginger Mauney has earned the acceptance of a troop of baboons; unraveled mysteries of life and death in an elephant herd, and raised her young son in the wilds of Namibia-but has often longed for the continent she left behind. As a local television anchor, Sara James paid her own way to cover the war in Nicaragua, a gamble which later propelled her to the network. At NBC, she exposed slavery in Sudan and plunged to the gravesite of the Titanic, but struggled to balance work with marriage and motherhood. Though the two lead seemingly opposite lives, there is much they share. A hometown in Richmond, Virginia. An attraction to life on the razor's edge. A weakness for men with foreign passports and accents. And a past. Now in their heartfelt memoir, Sara and Ginger alternately narrate the story of how two women separated by thousands of miles have found themselves bound together through temperament, circumstance, and serendipity. Using the example of their own lives, The Best of Friends explore universal questions. The Best of Friends is Sara and Ginger's story, but it is also the story of so many women in their 20's, 30's, and 40's, who with the help of friends, dare to reinvent their lives just when it seemed that everything was falling apart.
Review
Two great friends, two fascinating individual stories, and a memoir that reads like a novel. -- Lian Dolan, author of Satellite Sisters' UnCommon Senses