The Book Club for Troublesome Women: A Novel

Summary

Margaret Ryan never really meant to start a book club—or a feminist revolution in her buttoned-up suburb.

By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman’s dream. She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia, one of Northern Virginia’s most exclusive and picturesque suburbs. She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman’s Place, a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy. On paper, she has it all. So why doesn’t that feel like enough?

Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia’s newest and most intriguing resident. As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte’s orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women, Bitsy and Viv, to the inaugural meeting. As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they had been sold isn’t all roses and sunshine—and that their secret longing for more is something they share.

Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea that their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments—and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives.

The Book Club for Troublesome Women is a humorous, thought provoking, and nostalgic romp through one pivotal and tumultuous American year—as well as an ode to self-discovery, persistence, and the power of sisterhood.