An elegant woman : a novel
(Book)

"On a winter day in 1910, at a train station in Ohio, two girls wait in the cold with their mother to begin a new life in the West. Tommy, the eldest, feels responsible for her sister, and in the years to come, as their mother campaigns for women's suffrage and teaches in one-room schoolhouses across Montana, she takes care of Katherine: trapping animals, begging, keeping house, cooking, while her sister goes to school. But as soon as Katherine graduates, Tommy makes a decision that will change the course of both of their lives -- separating the two sisters forever, sending one to California and the other to New York. A profound meditation on memory, history, and legacy, ten years in the writing, An Elegant Woman follows one woman over the course of the 20th century, taking the reader from a drought-stricken farm in Montana to a yellow Victorian in Maine; from the halls of a psychiatric hospital in London to a wedding gown fitting at Bergdorf Goodman; from a house in small town Ohio to a family reunion at a sweltering New Jersey pig roast. Through betrayals, revelations, separations, and reunions, the story illuminates the complexities of class, race, feminism, and family, the sacrifices and compromises that go into making a life."--,Provided by publisher.