Everlasting Friendship in Hannah’s Firefly Lane

I have read many a novel of friendships; friendships woven from lost innocence’s to shared intimacies, friendships that were practically born and others that took years to refine. Never before have I been able to relate to the characters on such a deep level as I have when reading Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane. This novel is an intricate journey into a relationship that is both complicated and simple, reserved yet youthful, surprising and satisfactorily predictable. Firefly Lane is full of rich characters who speak to Hannah’s audience and with whom this particular author found comfort.
The story opens with one of the main characters, Tully, short for Tallulah Hart. Just by her name, we assume that she is a different and spontaneous young woman with a fierce personality, but the picture of Tully that is immediately painted for us is one of a young girl who is quiet and who is in desperate need of her mother. While living with her grandmother, Tully yearns for her mother to come home, her thoughts becoming consumed with her. One year, Tully makes a macaroni and bead necklace for her mother in hopes that one day she will return to claim it and her daughter. One day, Tully thinks her dreams have come true when her mother returns and whisks her away much to her grandmother’s dismay. Tully is in her mother’s possession for no longer than a day when she loses her mother in a crowd and is eventually returned home to her grandmother. Tully’s heart breaks and Hannah enables her audience to feel her pain. The second time we, the audience are acquainted with “Cloud,” Tully’s mother, she has taken Tully away again and has moved into a house across from the Mularkeys on a street named Firefly Lane.
The second main character, Kate Mularkey is a young girl ostracized by her peers yet fiercely loved by her family – every teen’s nightmare! Kate is a plain girl and is not allowed to wear make-up and she feels as though her whole life is in shambles until she sees Tully at the bus stop one morning. Kate automatically thinks Tully is beautiful and she can only imagine how popular she is. She is too nervous to say anything to her and it isn’t until one night when Tully is stripped of her innocence that the two become fast friends.
Throughout the course of the novel, we are taken on a roller coaster ride of the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Kate and Tully’s relationship. Through various crushes, from professors to Kate’s boss, there is always this underlying tension between the two friends that is successfully quelled before it has a chance to evolve into the third world war; however one thoughtless decision forces Kate and Tully to really evaluate their friendship and what it means to each of them.
Both Kate and Tully are so well defined as characters but more importantly as women, daughters, and friends. Tully is able to elicit a sense of compassion and sympathy from Hannah’s readers, which is crucial when trying to understand and relate to a character; especially one as complex as she. However, for me, Kate was the character who I related to the best; not because we share the same name (although that helped!), but because she was an individual who seemed so sure of herself in her earlier years and who despite her love for her family, felt there was something missing from her life. Kate was a lovable character yet at times she could seem a little harsh and unforgiving, specifically with Tully. She was often overcome with emotion easily and was willing to give the shirt off her back for anybody she loved. Kate frequently put herself out there and was repeatedly hurt when she did not expect it and even when she did. Kate was a well-rounded character and even though she may not have been as full of mystery, success and instability as her best friend, she was an under-dog all her own.
Kristin Hannah’s portrayal of best friends is a beautiful story of two girls who weather thirty years together and who still manage to make each other a priority despite what obstacles come their way. The story is so intricately woven with essential detail that the reader has no choice but to envy the girls from Firefly Lane.