What Went Missing the Same Time Daddy Did List (insightful and heartbreaking).

Her Royal Highness’s Favorite Things (this would be their narcissistic bitchy mom, Louise).

Life’s Little Mysteries (award-winning).

Her To-Do Lists (love the strikeouts, when she accomplishes the item or no longer needed),.

In the summer of 1959, in Milwaukee there are two sisters, not yet teens, both OCD Tess with her daily routine of making lists (and keeping them updated daily) with:

The Finley Sisters are guaranteed to steal your heart, as you laugh out loud with Lesley Kagen’s bittersweet novella, THE UNDERTAKING OF TESS, and double your pleasure, with a continuation of this dynamic duo in THE RESURRECTION OF TESS BLESSING. Heartbreaking, funny, nostalgic, and spiritually uplifting, you’ll cheer the Finley sisters on from the first page to the last of this charming novella that sets the stage for the upcoming novel, The Resurrection of Tess Blessing. Her daddy always told her, “A Finley never throws in the towel,” so more than anything Tess wants to make him proud, but despite her resourcefulness and grit, she’s smart enough to know that the odds are stacked against her and her time is running out. If Tessie can’t achieve her goals, she’s desperately worried that the beautiful, but self-occupied Louise, might send emotionally fragile Birdie to the county insane asylum. Stronger, and more down to Earth than ethereal Birdie, she’s always watched over her sister, so it’s only natural for her to come up with a plan that she jots down on one of her never-ending TO-DO LISTS.

Tessie needs to make sure that she does before their Mom gets wind of how much “weirder” her sister’s getting. Not only is she attempting to come to grips with the devastating loss and guilt she feels after she witnessed her father’s drowning, but her kid sister, Birdie, refuses to believe that their beloved Daddy is really gone. Four months on Amazon's Top 100 women's fiction/sister list!ĭuring the summer of 1959, ten-year-old Theresa “Tessie” Finley has her work cut out for her. From New York Times bestselling author Lesley Kagen.

The Undertaking of Tess by Lesley Kagen