Ellyn Bache

Ellyn Bache wrote novels and short stories attentive to the private adjustments that reshape ordinary American families. The Art of Saying Goodbye follows four suburban women after their neighbor Paisley receives a grave diagnosis. Andrea, Ginger, Iona, and Maddie are not presented as a perfectly matched circle; each understands Paisley differently, and each must reconsider the choices she has postponed. That structure lets Bache explore friendship through separate acts of recognition rather than a single collective lesson. William Morrow published The Art of Saying Goodbye: A Novel in 2011, and Southern booksellers selected it as an Okra Pick. Bache brought decades of literary work to the book. She had written fiction, worked as a bookseller and publisher, and served as director of the North Carolina Writers' Network. Her earlier novel Safe Passage was adapted for film. Here, she keeps the emphasis on how one person's approaching absence reveals unfinished ambitions, strained marriages, and unexpected loyalties among the people who remain.