A powerful new novel about life and love by Rona Jaffe, the internationally bestselling author The New York Times Book Review hails as "a minor genius." For over five decades, Rona Jaffe has captivated readers with her "deft, irresistible storytelling" ( Los Angeles Times ). Now this masterful author, whose books have sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, takes us through a season of friendship, discovery, betrayal, and love to tell a story of four friends and the events that shaped their futures. Leigh, Cady, Vanessa, and Susan meet when they become roommates in a townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side. New York in 1963 is a place of magical enchantment and infinite possibilities, especially when you're young and eager for the adventure a big city offers. Even being crammed together in a single bedroom with a kitchen too small to accommodate a table and chairs can't diminish their high spirits. A casting assistant at a talent company, Leigh is the level-headed one, the calm at the center of the whirlwind that is their lives. Cady is a prep-school teacher, emotional, passionate, and ready for love. Vanessa, a stewardess, craves her independence above all else. Susan is the wild card. Mercurial and unconventional, she makes a decision that will have far-reaching consequences in her life-and in the lives, through the years, of the others. Sleeping and dreaming side by side, Leigh, Cady, Vanessa, and Susan could not know the decisions they made in 1963 would be challenged later, not only because they had been young when they made them, but because the world itself was going to change around them. And then, of course, there were the events in their young lives that no one could control...the events that changed everything. Jaffe, author of The Road Taken (2000) and After the Reunion (1985), presents another gentle, knowing, and compulsively readable coming-of-age story. The year is 1963, and college friends Leigh and Cady are determined to begin their adult lives amid the cosmopolitan social whirl of New York City. An ad for roommates brings two more young women into the circle: Vanessa, a sophisticated airline stewardess, and awkward, needy misfit Susan. Leigh, Cady, and Vanessa become fast friends, united by their success with men, their good looks, and their social savvy. But Susan's eccentricities grate on her roommates, and her clumsy bids for their attention ultimately end in tragedy. Jaffe traces the lives of her characters over the next four decades with wit and poignancy. Sensible, generous Leigh falls in love and ultimately achieves both domestic and career success. Worldly Vanessa finds herself trapped in a marriage of convenience and drifts into a series of infidelities. The inner lives of all of these women are compelling, but it's the impetuous, self-centered, and recklessly loving Cady who is the lifeblood of the whole story. Jaffe is wise and witty as ever, and her latest novel will delight her fans--and win her some new ones. Meredith Parets Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Rona Jaffe is the New York Times bestselling author of the internationally acclaimed novels The Road Taken , The Cousins , Family Secrets , and Five Women , as well as the classic bestsellers Class Reunion and The Best of Everything . She is the founder of the Rona Jaffe Foundation, which presents a national literary award to promising female writers.