ISBN: 0307715310

A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman’s life, from the 1880s to World War II.Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at tw… Plus…

A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman’s life, from the 1880s to World War II.Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post–Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He’s the most famous man their small town has ever produced: a naval officer and a brilliant astronomer—a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret’s mother calls the match "a piece of luck."Margaret is a good girl who has been raised to marry, yet Andrew confounds her expectations from the moment their train leaves for his naval base in faraway California. Soon she comes to understand that his devotion to science leaves precious little room for anything, or anyone, else. When personal tragedies strike and when national crises envelop the country, Margaret stands by her husband. But as World War II approaches, Andrew’s obsessions take a different, darker turn, and Margaret is forced to reconsider the life she has so carefully constructed.Private Life is a beautiful evocation of a woman’s inner world: of the little girl within the hopeful bride, of the young woman filled with yearning, and of the faithful wife who comes to harbor a dangerous secret. But it is also a heartbreaking portrait of marriage and the mysteries that endure even in lives lived side by side; a wondrously evocative historical panorama; and, above all, a masterly, u fiction,genre fiction,historical,literary,literature and fiction Literature & Fiction, Random House Audio<

ISBN: 0307715310

Questions for Jane Smiley on A Private Life Q: Some of the characters in Private Life are based in part on members of your own family--your main character Margaret Mayfield on your gr… Plus…

Questions for Jane Smiley on A Private Life Q: Some of the characters in Private Life are based in part on members of your own family--your main character Margaret Mayfield on your great aunt, Frances See and Andrew Early on her infamous scientist husband Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, a naval astronomer whose increasingly implausible theories made him an outcast in the scientific community. Did you ever meet them? A: I didn't know my aunt at all, or her husband. She died when I was about two or three. She was my grandfather's much older sister--he was the youngest of ten children and she was number two or three. But my mother and her siblings were quite fond of her. As for her husband, they thought he was just an eccentric family uncle, and I don't think they realized how infamous he was in the physics establishment. Q: How much of Margaret and Andrew draw from your aunt and uncle's actual experience and how much is purely fictional? A: There were only a few family stories that revealed personal details about them--for example that she drove an elderly Franklin and had a good sense of humor. My mother had visited her in the nineteen-forties, I think, and she remembered that my aunt loved Oriental art (a trait she shares with my character Margar genre fiction,historical,literary,literature and fiction Literature & Fiction, Random House Audio<

2010, ISBN: 9780307715319

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