Patricia Sands


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Topics of conversation:

  • Importance of friendships amongst women
  • Exceptional bonds that occur between women over a period of time
  • Diversity, ages, values, and issues women face
  • How they handle disagreements, jealousy and major crisis

Patricia Sands lives in Toronto, Canada and has degrees from the University of Waterloo and York University. With a happily blended family of seven adult children and, at last count, six grandchildren, life is full and time is short. Beginning with her first Kodak Brownie camera at the age of six, she has told stories all of her life through photography. Much to her surprise a few years ago, she began to write and her debut novel The Bridge Club has just been published through iUniverse. Currently at work on her second novel, Patricia admits the writing muse has possessed her. She is particularly drawn to the rewarding friendships of women and the challenges many embrace once their families are grown. "It's never too late to begin something new," she enthuses. "As the saying goes, just do it!"

The Bridge Club…..it was never just about the cards

Patricia Sands
iUniverse (2010)
ISBN 9781450241359
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (3/11) 

Read the review on ReaderViews.com


 Synopsis: The Bridge Club is a moving tale of eight women whose lives intersect once a month initially to play the game of bridge. What began as one night turns into four decades that span the segments of a woman’s journey from youthful optimism to embracing the challenges and opportunities presented in life’s later years.

Playing bridge with the same women for 40 years isn’t just about the cards. Not with this group.

From the wild days of the psychedelic ‘60’s to the sometimes still wild days in their sixties, the eight women of the tongue-in-cheek Bridge Club meet each month. They aren’t necessarily each other’s best friend, but their connection is unwavering. At the ‘group’ sixtieth birthday weekend, each woman is challenged to choose one particular time in those 40 years when the BC, as they call it, came to her rescue: a personal SOS, as it were.

Based loosely on her own bridge club, Sands weaves the reader through a maze of life’s inevitable scenarios as the club bears the death of a member’s spouse, one woman’s meeting with her biological mother, the inevitable marital and health issues, and another’s final chance at freedom from the painful addiction to alcohol through rehab.

The final chapter of The Bridge Club challenges our principles as one woman begins to descend into dementia

“There are many subjects I address in the book that are controversial. Some people may wonder if they were chosen to thicken the plot,” says Sands. “Although I have taken liberties with the actual events, and it is truly a work of fiction, most issues faced by the characters in the book were experienced in my own bridge club. The bottom line of the story is a testament to friendship and hope.”