If You Like Barbara Kingsolver

Before You Know Kindness  by Christopher Bohjalian
After a decade of spending a delightful summer week at their country house in New Hampshire, the members of the extended Seton family are confronted by a terrible accident, testing the values and relationships that hold them together.

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Interweaves the events of Tom Wingo's summer in New York and his relationship to Susan Lowenstein, his sister Savannah's beautiful psychiatrist, and the complex history of the South Carolinian Wingo family, from World War II through Vietnam.

The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich
A United States Cavalry officer saves an Ojibwa girl after her village is destroyed and raises her as his own, but after her mother finds her, she spends time with antelope and creates complex relationships with them.

Divining Women by Kaye Gibbons
In 1918, Maureen Ross struggles to deal with a difficult pregnancy and her emotionally abusive husband Troop, until the arrival of Troop's niece, Mary Oliver, the child of a wealthy, freethinking family who sets out to protect her aunt.

On Mystic Lake by Kristin Hannah
Devastated by her divorce, Anne Colwater retreats to her childhood home in Washington, where she encounters her old friend Nick, a widower with an emotionally scarred young daughter.

Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott
A close-knit family from Marin County, California, the Fergusons struggle to cope with the trials and tribulations of life, while 13-year-old Rosie, obsessed with becoming a tennis champion, embarks on a desperate cycle of cheating.

Patty Jane’s House of Curl by Lorna Landvik
In this upbeat novel about two sisters living in Minnesota between the 1950s and the 1980s, Patty Jane marries young, is abandoned by her husband, and lives with baby daughter Nora and mother-in-law Ione. Patty Jane's sister, Harriet, is engaged to a millionaire, who is killed in an airplane crash just before the wedding. When Patty Jane opens a beauty parlor called "The House of Curl," it quickly becomes the locale of a women's support group.

The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Billie Letts
A sunny look at the dark side, as a poster group – a Vietnam vet, an Asian immigrant, a Native American, and an African-American widow – serendipitously find happiness at an Oklahoma diner. Letts while a deft scene-setter, offers characters whose pain seems a plot accessory to be worn until something better comes along – and whose ultimate happiness feels as superficial as their previous misery.

Bad Girl Creek by Joanna Mapson
There’s not a woman alive who wouldn’t want to spend time with the ladies down at Bad Girl Creek. This is a place where the wounded are welcome, but only if they bring their pets, and the price of admission is a willingness to work the flower farm that supports them. Phoebe, Ness, Nance and Beryl, four women of wit and grit, transcend their individual pain to revel in the promise their combined lives make possible.

Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott
A teenage girl, raised on the east end of Long Island among the country estates of the rich, reflects on her understanding of human nature during a seemingly idyllic summer spent with her eight-year-old cousin Daisy.

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
Judd Mulvaney, now age 30, and the youngest of the four Mulvaney children, looks back through his memories to tell the secrets that eventually ripped apart the fabric of his storybook family.

Unless by Carol Shields
Reta Winters lives with her physician husband and three daughters in a farmhouse outside Orangetown, Ontario, an hour from Toronto. Well, all three of Reta's daughters used to live there; Norah, now 19, currently spends her time in silent contemplation, holding a begging bowl on a Toronto street corner. During the course of her anguish over her daughter's renunciation of her middle-class upbringing, Reta, a writer, tries to put life back into reasonable order in the pages of her new novel. Accepting that a daughter has "gone to goodness" is, ironically, a program of pain assuagement for Reta.

Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope
David and Nathalie, adopted and raised by the same parents but born to different mothers, decide, in their thirties, to begin a painful journey to find their birth mothers, affecting their spouses, children, and co-workers.