by Jane Smiley
First published 2010
Margaret Mayfield faces spinsterhood at twenty-seven in post-Civil War Missouri when Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early proposes. The local paper calls him a genius who changed the universe. Her mother considers the marriage lucky. Margaret boards a train to California expecting one kind of life with this naval officer and astronomer. She discovers Andrew's scientific obsessions consume him completely. Personal losses test her loyalty. National upheavals reshape their world. Margaret supports her husband through decades of marriage as his work grows increasingly important to him. When World War II looms, Andrew's interests shift toward something darker. Margaret must examine the life she built so carefully. She carries secrets that could destroy everything. The story follows her transformation from hopeful young bride to a woman who understands the hidden costs of devotion.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 19th-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Missouri, California
Period: Post-Civil War, World War II
321 pages · Hardcover · Alfred A. Knopf
Content warnings: war