"Getting to Happy," Terry McMillan's sequel to "Waiting to Exhale"

In her break-out bestseller, "Waiting to Exhale" (1992), Terry McMillan celebrated female bonding. Girlfriends assumed top status in the hierarchy of important relationships for women. The novel, about four black women living in Phoenix in the late 1980s, depicted professional burn-out, romantic betrayal and survival. These were women in their late 30s and early 40s, providing solace to one another in a way that family members, husbands and boyfriends did not. They partied together, cried together and, ultimately, recovered together.

McMillan's new novel, "Getting to Happy," is a sequel that resumes the story some 15 years later. All four women are back, but this time, of course, they're middle-aged. The issues of their youth have morphed into new ones. There are children now from failed relationships and grandchildren, too, along with failed businesses and second mortgages. Each of the four is in her 50s, or about to be, and not quite sure what to do with herself. Read more here.