To be the older sister, or the younger sister. To have a twin. To have no sister at all, but to long for someone to talk to about your parents. These are the topics, lovingly explored, in a collection of essays edited by Patricia Foster. "Sister to Sister," is due to be published in December.

It's the second collection Foster has edited. As in her first collection, "Minding the Body," Foster asked poets and novelists, as well as nonfiction authors, to write about an aspect of growing up female.Some of the essayists in this collection are familiar: belle hooks, Pam Houston, Mona Simpson, Letty Cottin Pogrebin. Others aren't familiar. But they all feel like family. Each writes about one small aspect of their own relationships.

Bonnie Friedman tells of her sister's multiple sclerosis. She says, "A sister's life interrogates yours, saying, Why do you live this way? Are you doing what is right? And when a sister has a disease, she has it for you, so you don't have to have it, just the way she picked up heavy knapsacks when she was stronger than you, or took the bed beneath the window when you begged, so you could feel safe."

Joan Wickersham writes of competitiveness. She says, "The struggle for territory always looks silly and self-important to those not engaged in it. I watch my cat crouch in the driveway furiously staring down another cat who has dared to venture onto the asphalt and I think . . . get a grip on yourselves, it's only a driveway."

Jessie Lee Kercheval writes of love. "Kay was shaking her head, her fine arched nose a study in determination. I thought her nose was beautiful. I thought she was beautiful and strong. She was the one who demanded we act like a family, put up a Christmas tree, eat in the dining room on Thanksgiving, when my father would rather stay in the office, I in my room, my mother in her bed. I loved her more than anything in the world. "Remember," she said. "A Watts doesn't do things like that."

One author writes about her sister's suicide. Another writes about the relationship between half-sisters. Several write about being twins, about sharing the same face.

Each of the authors in this collection writes with grace about one detail of sisterhood. Taken as a whole, the collection "Sister to Sister" illuminates the complexities of an engrossing relationship.

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