While I Was Gone (Oprah's Book Club)

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x201C;Riveting . . . While I Was Gone [celebrates] what is impulsive in human nature.x201D;x2013;The New York Timesx201C;Miller weaves her themes of secrecy, betrayal, and forgiveness into a narrative that shines.x201D;x2013;TimeJo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving marriage, and a rewarding career. But she feels a sense of unease. Then an old housemate reappears, sending Jo back to a distant past when she lived in a communal house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn deeper into her memories of that fateful summer in 1968, Jo begins to obsess about the person she once was. As she is pulled farther from her present life, her husband, and her world, Jo struggles against becoming enveloped by her past and its dark secret.x201C;[While I Was Gone] swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a womanx2019;s complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasiesx2013;and fearsx2013;about another man. . . . [Miller writes] well about the trials of faith.x201D;x2013;The New York Times Book Reviewx201C;Quietly gripping . . . Jo shines steadily as the flawed and thoroughly modern heroine. As in her 1986 novel, The Good Mother, Miller shows how impulses can fracture the family.x201D;x2013;USA Todayx201C;Marvelous . . . poignant . . . powerful.x201D;x2013;Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer