The Prodigal Women: A Novel

Description

The other side of Gatsby: rediscover this sensational bestseller that unveiled the Jazz Age from the flappers’ perspective
 
Ranging from posh Beacon Hill to go-go New York City to stately Virginia, a sweeping coming-of-age story of three women’s lives, loves, and ambitions in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s

An uncompromising literary portrait of the interior lives of women, The Prodigal Women was an explosive hit when published in 1942, the scent of scandal propelling it to the bestseller list. It tells the intertwined stories of Leda March, a lonely New England schoolgirl, and Betsy and Maizie Jekyll, daughters of a transplanted Virginia clan who upend Boston society, tracing their friendship from adolescence into adulthood, through childhood bullying, a string of abusive marriages, dangerous liaisons, botched abortions, and feminist awakenings, with Leda ultimately turning her back on love and desire and embracing her own mysterious inner strength.

Fascinating and gripping, The Prodigal Women was a crucial influence on such later works as Mary McCarthy’s The Group and Jacqueline Susann‘s Valley of the Dolls, and it remains powerfully resonant today.Nancy Hale (1908-1988) was born in Boston to a distinguished New England family whose forbearers include Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was the author of eight novels, including the bestselling The Prodigal Women, four short story collections, two memoirs, two plays, children’s stories, and a biography on Mary Cassatt. The winner of ten O. Henry Awards, Hale published over two hundred stories and essays, eighty of which appeared in The New Yorker, making her one of the most important contributors in the history of the magazine.
 
Kate Bolick is the author of Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own and co-author of March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women.US