A Short History of Women
Kate Walbert
Scribner
<p><b><p>NOMINATED FOR THE <i>LOS ANGELES TIMES </i>BOOK PRIZE<p></b><p>A profoundly moving portrait of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters, <i>A Short History of Women </i>chronicles five generations of women from the close of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twenty-first. Beginning in 1914 at the deathbed of Dorothy Trevor Townsend, a suffragette who starves herself for the cause, the novel traces the echoes of her choice in the stories of her descendants--a brilliant daughter who tries to escape the burden of her mother's infamy; a granddaughter who chooses a conventional path, only to find herself disillusioned; a great-granddaughter who wryly articulates the free-floating anxiety of post-9/11 Manhattan. In a kaleidoscope of characters and with a richness of imagery, emotion, and wit, <i>A Short History of Women </i>is a thought-provoking and vividly original narrative that crisscrosses a century--a book for "any woman who has ever struggled...</p></p></p></p>