An Elegant Woman

A powerful, moving multigenerational saga from National Book Award finalist Martha McPhee that explores one family's story against the sweep of 20th-century American history.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...