Reviews

Library Journal – July 15, 2008
“Clayton’s well-developed characters embody the best and the worst qualities in all women. They are endearing, infuriating, and real, so much so that you won’t want to say good-bye to them when this engaging book ends.”
— Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY

Booklist – April 18, 2008
“Set during the summer of 1968 in Palo Alto, California, Clayton’s novel chronicles the lives of five women who conduct a weekly writing group at their neighborhood park… The women share their feelings about marriage and motherhood… support one another through illness, infertility, racism, and infidelity—and encourage each other through publishers’ rejections. Readers will be swept up by this moving novel about female friendship and enthralled by the recounting of a pivotal year in American history as seen through these young women’s eyes.”
— Aleksandra Walker

Publishers Weekly – March 4, 2008
“Clayton chronicles a group of mothers who convene in a Palo Alto park and share their changing lives as the late 1960s counterculture blossoms around them… Frankie, a Chicago transplant who has followed her computer genius husband to a nascent Silicon Valley, is the story’s narrator and the ladies’ ringleader, inspiring them all to follow her dream of becoming a writer. They write in moments snatched from their household chores and share their stories in the park… Clayton ably conjures the era’s details and captures the women’s changing roles in a world that expects little of them.”