Suitcase Sisters: Book 1
Publication Date: October 15, 2024
Ever since they met as teenagers volunteering at a conference center in Costa Rica 20 years ago, Fern Espinoza and Lily Graden have shared a close friendship, even though they live in different states. They can hardly believe it when their teen dream of traveling to Africa together becomes a reality. It’s the trip of a lifetime—but life sure isn’t what they thought it would be back when they were young.
Along with their suitcases, each woman brings along emotional baggage that weighs heavily on them. Yet the people they meet and the places they experience have the power to change their hearts—but only if they surrender to the lessons God wants to teach them in this unexpected land of emerald tea fields, graceful giraffes, and rambunctious elephants.
Pack your bags and get ready for adventure as Robin Jones Gunn invites you on a safari of the heart in this vulnerable exploration of how to move forward in faith even when the future is uncertain.
Robin Jones Gunn draws both her characters and readers away from the chaos and stresses of a modern life and brings them on a meandering of reflection and natural beauty on the plains of Kenya in the concise novel Tea With Elephants.
Lily and Fern met in their youth as they worked at a camp in Central America. They forged a bond over what they planned would be a lifetime of seeking adventure and following work of service, they feel God has laid out for them.
Quickly, life moves in a different direction when Lily marries young and starts a family. Fern accepts an internship in the publishing industry and continues working her way up to senior editor over two decades. Fern herself has created a family with a man who had adopted a troubled teen. The women keep their deep bond as life goes on, and their lives continue to give them ups, but as of recently, more downs.
Then Lily calls with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to suspend life as they know it for a short time and accept a gift of a luxurious African Safari. No matter how grand an “opportunity,” the necessity of arranging the pieces of a busy life can push the adventure into the sphere of “maybe another time will be best”? But Lily is persistent.
The story’s pace is intended to move gently. It is in the quiet that what is in your heart surfaces in truth. The women unfold their reflections of what has been set aside and what has caught them in the patterns of daily life. They share the crossroads of where they each have recently been stuck. The women both have life struggles that can easily translate to many readers. Maybe what life can hand you can be harsh, so I felt the anguish was a bit theatrical for what they held to be their deepest disappointments.
This novel is a good change of pace from reading for thrills or heavy character development. It is something more than reflecting using a devotional.
Tea With Elephants is a lovely way to picture a unique, exotic escape with a friend, all the while allowing a prayerful, meditative time with yourself.
Robin Jones Gunn is the bestselling and award-winning author of more than 100 books, including the Sisterchicks series and the Christy Miller series for teen girls. Her books have sold more than 6 million copies. Robin and her husband have two grown children and four grandchildren and live in southern California, where she co-hosts the Women Worth Knowing podcast. The details in this novel come from Robin’s trips to Africa, where she strolled through a tea field, slept in a treetop hotel on Mount Kenya, and went on safari with her Kenyan friend who makes delicious masala chai tea.
