While I Was Gone (Oprah’s Book Club)
by posted on Saturday, December 8th 2012.
“Riveting . . . While I Was Gone [celebrates] what is impulsive in human nature.”
–The New York Times
“Miller weaves her themes of secrecy, betrayal, and forgiveness into a narrative that shines.”
–Time
Jo 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.
“[While I Was Gone] swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a woman’s complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasies–and fears–about another man. . . . [Mi