WE’RE SISTERS, and that explains everything…
Your sister can be the first person you call with news whether it’s good or bad or…she can be the last. Of course, there are always sisters who fall somewhere in between. But wherever you and your sister end up on the scale of the sister bond, the reasons are often complex and multi-layered.
After all, the sister relationship is one of the longest in your lifetime. Statistically speaking, women outlive men by five to ten years, and children outlive parents. So it’s likely your sister will be the one person who will be with you the longest. She’s also likely to be the one person who will know you best. She’ll know your strengths and weaknesses, which buttons to push and when, be your strongest advocate or your worst enemy.
My sister and I were born fifteen months apart. She’s the oldest, and we fit, although not neatly, into the older/younger sister mold. I’ve shared some of the best and deepest belly laughs with her. And I’ve engaged in some of the fiercest battles where we didn’t speak to each other for days and occasionally even months. But eventually something happens and we come together again. Of course most of these occurrences happened when we were younger, growing up together where sibling rivalry can’t be avoided so easily.
I remember a particular incident when I was ten or eleven years old. I was at a football game and bent down to tie my saddle shoe (who remembers those?), and a cheerleader from the other team smashed a cup of soda on my head. I recall so clearly how my sister flew from the stands to defend me. I swear she had wings that day. But what I find curious about my sister’s actions is that not two days before, she’d locked me out of the bathroom, called me names, and tormented me for reasons I still don’t know.
I’m the youngest, so naturally I called for our mother. It drove my sister crazy when I did this, calling me a “baby” until I screamed, you know, like a baby. When I step back and look at how we treated each other, our actions toward each other, I wonder what was really going on below the surface of our relationship. When someone else threatened me, she came to my rescue and then some. Why did she bother when we were barely on speaking terms? It was as though she were saying, No one is allowed to pick on my sister but me. Is there a sense of ownership in there somewhere—she’s mine, I’m hers. Sisters.
I started thinking more and more about this kind of love/hate relationship. I talked with a few close friends and learned that they also had many of the same feelings and experiences with their sisters that I had with mine. Now, I know there are sister relationships that are nothing but kind and supportive like the sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s, LITTLE WOMEN. But my interests in sisters extend beyond this experience. So I did what I always do when I want to learn about something in my world, I turned to books.
There are three novels about sisters that have stuck with me—THE WEIRD SISTERS, by Eleanor Brown, THE MOON SISTERS, by Therese Walsh, and SISTERLAND, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I love this quote from THE WEIRD SISTERS, and I think it sums up what even the closest of sisters feel about each other at one time or another. “See, we love each other. We just don’t happen to like each other very much.”
In THE MOON SISTERS, the sisters have lost their mother and handle their grief in drastically different ways, but it’s the older sister who feels “forced by her sense of duty to help her younger sister reach her goal.” I wonder if my sister has ever felt this kind of sisterly duty towards me. I think it’s very possible.
SISTERLAND is slightly different in that it’s a story about twin sisters and being twins can bring about its own set of challenges. The twins in this story question not only their identities but also their obligations to each other. There’s even a little bit of psychic connection to add to the fun. What I loved about the twins was how one sister’s appearance could annoy the other sister. It’s not even what the sister says that irritates her, but how she looks. Why does this bother her so much? Maybe the answer is as simple as your sister is someone that you spend a vast amount of time with where the littlest things can start to rub you the wrong way.
When I was writing THE SISTERS OF BLUE MOUNTAIN, I knew I wanted to explore the relationship between two sisters that were once as close as they could be, and how an event, one bad decision, tears them apart and whether they could find their way back to each other again. I tend to blend genres mixing mystery/suspense and women’s fiction so expect a body count. But the heart of the novel is the sisters, their complicated relationship, and the secrets that ultimately bind them.
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About THE SISTERS OF BLUE MOUNTAIN
A sisters’ secret.
A mysterious phenomenon.
A murder that ties it all together.
An emotional, suspenseful novel about the bond between sisters and the secrets we hold to keep our family safe, The Sisters of Blue Mountain by Karen Katchur is a thrilling mystery that hurtles towards an unexpected ending that will leave readers speechless.
The small town of Mountain Springs, Pennsylvania thrives on the snow geese migration. Each year, the birds flock to the dam, and the tourists follow, filling up Linnet’s Bed and Breakfast.
But one morning Linnet wakes up to discover hundreds of dead geese by the B&B and her life is thrown into the media frenzy when her father―a former ornithology professor―is asked to study the case. As the tourists cancel their plans and Linnet’s father’s health grows increasingly worse, the last thing she expects is to see her estranged sister, Myna, on her doorstep.
Myna has never stayed in one place for long after running from Mountain Springs. Although she and Linnet were close growing up, a family secret broke their bond, and Myna’s return has brought back memories both sisters have tried to keep buried.
When a reporter arrives in town who may have a connection to the sisters’ past, Linnet and Myna are forced to confront the event that tore them apart. But when a young professor who was assisting their father on the case turns up dead―and their father becomes the primary suspect―Linnet and Myna realize that their secret won’t stay hidden for long…
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Karen Katchur holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from West Chester University and a Masters of Education degree from East Stroudsburg University. She lives in Eastern Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. THE SISTERS OF BLUE MOUNTAIN is her second novel.
Connect with Karen online
www.facebook.com/karenkatchurauthor
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing
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