The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Brashares, Ann. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood. Book 2 of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. 2003. 373p. ISBN 0-385-72934-0. Available at FIC BRA on the library shelves.

Last summer a pair of jeans from the thrift store saved four girls from a terrible summer apart. At nearly seventeen, the four friends find themselves heading in different directions again. Lena will be working all summer. She and Kostos broke off their relationship, but she soon discovers that Kostos has come to the United States to pursue an internship in New York City. They can see each other every weekend, when he will make the trip down to Washington. Kostos, however, has a secret that will crush Lena.

Tibby is attending a summer program at Williamson College. There she struggles with acceptance by friends she perceives as cooler, and ignores Brian’s overture towards more than friendship. It takes making a mockery of her mother for her first production to realize that the story she really should tell is Bailey’s, her young friend who died of leukemia last summer.

Bridget dropped out of soccer during the year, blowing her chance at scholarship from a big university. When she discovers letters her maternal grandmother wrote her family, she decides she must reconnect with her and learn more about her own dead mother. She travels to Alabama, where she pretends to be someone else but soon finds herself living under that new identity with her grandmother, helping her clean the attic and removing personal memories that help Bee reconstruct a better view of her mother. As the same time, her abandonment of soccer was premature.

Last summer Carmen made an impression on Krista, her step-sister. Krista runs away to live with Carmen. At the same time, Christina, Carmen’s mother, re-enters the dating scene with a co-worker, throwing Carmen for a loop. Has she been holding her mother back all this time?

Through it all, the four best friends exchange the jeans. For the first part of the summer, the jeans are not used, but when Christina wears them Carmen throws a fit and decides to break her relationship with David so she will not be left alone. As the summer progresses, however, and as each girl’s relationship deepens, the jeans once again help make everything right. And as tragedy strikes, all four friends will be reunited and able to support each other.