Private Life: with author Jane Smiley May 11, 2010

This riveting novel inspired by Jane Smiley's family history, tells the story of Margaret Mayfield Early, wife of the eccentric Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, who asks a simple question. "…what does it feel like to, more or less, place a bet and then live with the consequences?" Her marriage to a brilliant, yet, self-absorbed man carries her from post-Civil War Missouri to California. Personal loss and the disasters of history, from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to the internment of the Japanese in the 1940s are among the elements shaping this portrait of a brave woman’s private life and aspirations.

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