Private Life

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres--and "one of her generation's most eloquent chroniclers of ordinary familial love" (The New York Times)--comes a "masterly...compelling depiction of a singular woman," (The New Yorker), from her childhood in post-Civil War Missouri to California in the throes of World War II.

Here is the powerful, deeply affecting story of one Margaret Mayfield. When Margaret marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early at the age of twenty-seven, she narrowly avoids condemning herself to life as an old maid. Instead, knowing little about marriage and even less about her husband, she moves with Andrew to his naval base in California. Margaret stands by Andrew during tragedies both historical and personal, but as World War II approaches and the secrets of her husband's scientific and academic past begin to surface, she is forced to reconsider the life she had so carefully constructed.

A riveting and nuanced novel of marriage and family, Private Life reveals the mysteries of intimacy and the anonymity that endures even in lives lived side by side.

Author: Jane Smiley
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 06/14/2011
Pages: 416
Weight: 0.7lbs
Size: 7.94h x 5.29w x 0.91d
ISBN: 9781400033195

About the Author
JANE SMILEY is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Golden Age, the concluding volume of The Last Hundred Years trilogy. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.