'Breast cancer is one of the great fears of women of our time.

The book examines one of the biggest issues when Kathleen is diagnosed with breast cancer.

'The issues of midlife are on my plate and on the plates of most of my friends,' she says. While the story of The Red Tent came from the pages of the Bible, the plot of Good Harbor, set in the present, comes from the pages of Diamant’s life and the lives of the women she knows. Eventually, the bond of sisterhood the women find in each other becomes a good harbor in itself. does put things in perspective,' as Kathleen says. Like Diamant, who rented a cottage on Cape Ann while she wrote, Kathleen loves Good Harbor, a stretch of beach outside the town with its 'straight line between the sea and the sky. Headlines, bathing suits, books, and story by story, themselves.' The two women discover, as Diamant writes, 'an endless supply of things to talk about. Joyce, a writer in her early 40s stuck in a lackluster marriage, buys a vacation home in the Massachusetts beach town of Cape Ann, where she meets Kathleen, 59. Women’s experience also drives Diamant’s new novel, Good Harbor, which intertwines the stories of two women. It’s such a women’s phenomenon, it’s almost entirely women’s experience.' They liked the book and recommended it to each other in a big way. 'They’ll pick and choose what they like and that’s a wonderful testament. 'You can’t market to reading groups,' says the author, speaking from her home in West Newton, Massachusetts. From its dead-in-the-water beginnings, Diamant’s novel began inching up the New York Times bestseller list and has since sold over a million copies. Though The Red Tent came out with virtually no fanfare or reviews, women bought the novel, recommended it and even started Red Tent reading groups. In a world where 'women’s friendships are unspoken and undervalued,' as Diamant says, her novel came as a gift to women, and women returned the favor. She explored and celebrated that connection, that powerful bond of sisterhood, in her 1997 novel The Red Tent.

Anita Diamant has faith in one thing the connection between women.

The red tent author