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Five Fortunes is a novel about the rejuvenating power of friendship. In it, five women of different socio-economic background and temperaments meet at The Cloisters–a posh health spa in Arizona affectionately called “Fat Chance” by its devotees. Each brings with her a private burden and a hope for emotional and physical healing. Rae Strouse, a wealthy, spry octogenarian, comes every year for relief from the pains and losses of old age. Amy Burrows and her overweight teenage daughter, Jill, come to try a new cure for an old trauma. Carter Bond, a divorced L.A. Private Investigator, has been tricked into a week at the Cloisters by a business partner who wants her to quit smoking. And Laura Lopez, a judge and daughter of a prominent Idaho political family, hopes to let go of a paralyzing sense that her own life ended when her husband’s did.
These five women have extremely different lives and gifts, but they have in common kindness, courage, and a sense of the ridiculous. The interlocking alliances they form affect each of them in unexpected ways in the touching, witty, and always entertaining story that follows their first chance meeting.