Five fortunes

Five Fortunes, the funny and hope-filled new novel from Beth Gutcheon, is about a year in the life of five remarkable women, each of whom saves her own life by trying to do the right thing for somebody else. Rae Strouse is a lively octogenarian with an ailing husband. Carter Bond is a private investigator trying to give up smoking. Amy and Jill Burrows are a mother and teenage daughter traveling together, bearing a secret weight of baggage between them. Laura Lopez, reeling from the death of her politician husband, needs a new set of dreams. They are about to meet at a fabled health spa called The Cloisters, known affectionately to its devotees as Fat Chance. In the luxury boot-camp atmosphere of The Cloisters, where doctors, lawyers, spoiled housewives, movie stars, and captains of industry are stripped of makeup and jewelry and the other social markers that keep people from really seeing each other, surprising friendships can be made, with surprising consequences.