The Book Club for Troublesome Women

Description

By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new "planned community" in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that "all" doesn't feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson--the eccentric and artsy "new neighbor" from Manhattan--and read Betty Friedan's just-released book, The Feminine Mystique. Controversial and groundbreaking, the book struck a chord with an entire generation of women, helping them realize that they weren't alone in their dissatisfactions, or their longings, lifting their eyes to new horizons of possibility and achievement. Margaret, Charlotte, Bitsy, and Viv are among them. But is it really the book that alters the lives of these four very different women? Or is it the bond of sisterhood that helps them find courage to confront the past, navigate turmoil in a rapidly changing world, and see themselves in a new and limitless light?

First Sentence

On a Wednesday morning in March 1963, twenty-five miles and yet a world away from the nation's capital and the rumblings of change that were beginning to be felt there, in a northern Virginia suburb called Concordia, so new that the roots of the association-aproved saplings were still struggling to take hold, and so meticulously planned that when the first wave of residents moved in the year before, the shops, library, and church opened on the very same day, as if God smote the ground and a fully formed suburb had erupted from the crack, Margaret Ryan stood in a sunny kitchen with appliances and matching Formica countertops of egg-yolk yellow, trying to decide what to serve the three women who would be coming to the first meeting of her new book club.

Subjects