Mrs. Everything

Jo and Bethie Kaufman grow up in 1950s Detroit, in a tidy suburban house where each member of the family has a set part to play. Jo is the tomboy, a bookish rebel who wants the world to be fairer. Bethie is the pretty, feminine younger sister who likes the power her looks give her and pictures a traditional life.

Neither sister's life goes to plan. Both live through traumas and tragedies, and the decades around them bring free love, Vietnam, Woodstock and the women's movement. Bethie turns into a wild child who throws herself into the counterculture and will try anything except settling down. Jo marries, becomes a young mother in Connecticut, and watches the changing world from the sidelines instead of taking part in it.

By midlife, neither woman is living the life she imagined, and neither feels like herself or finds much joy in her days. The question hanging over them is whether it is too late to claim some happiness of their own.

This is a multigenerational family novel in contemporary women's fiction, following the two sisters from the 1950s to the present. It moves through the decades at a steady pace, and its tone is thoughtful and reflective. Its central question is how a woman should live in the world.