"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices." In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman's personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist...

Traces the author's journey of self-discovery after the dissolution of her marriage, revealing how she found healing by rejecting gender standards and refusing to settle for a "good-enough" life.

A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of two deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of Fuller's own marriage leaves her shattered. Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she finally confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and about the family she left behind in Africa.

When Leslie Morgan divorced after a twenty-year marriage, both her self-esteem and romantic optimism were shattered. She was determined to avoid the cliché of the "lonely, middle-aged divorcée" lamenting her stretch marks and begging her kids to craft her online dating profile. Instead, Leslie celebrated her independence with an audacious plan: she would devote a year to seeking out five lovers in hopes of unearthing the erotic adventures and authentic...

The author chronicles how the U.S. government gave her and her Brazilian-born lover, Felipe, an ultimatum--marry or he cannot enter the country again--and how she tackled her fears through research and reflection on the institution of marriage.

"Laura Esther Wolfson's literary debut draws on years of immersion in the Russian and French languages; struggles to gain a basic understanding of Judaism, its history, and her place in it; and her search for a form to hold the stories that emerge from what she has lived, observed, overheard, and misremembered. In "Proust at Rush Hour," when her lungs begin to collapse and fail, forcing her to give up an exciting and precarious existence as a globetrotting...

In The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Amy Dickinson, syndicated advice columnist and weekly National Public Radio celeb, shares her remarkable story--a tale of Amy and her daughter and the people who helped raise them after Amy found herself a reluctant single parent.

"'Your wife is having an affair with my husband. It has caused some trouble in my marriage and I thought you should know.' One phone call in December 2005 begins the compelling, unpredictable story of Fake Missed Connections. A child of divorce with an already fragile sense of trust, Lauer unravels at the betrayal, begins divorce proceedings, and moves back to Brooklyn where he spends too much time alone, fixated on the idea that a murderer from 1898...

Hayden Herrera’s parents each married five times; following their desires was more important to them than looking after their children. When Herrera was only three years old, her parents separated and she and her sister moved from Cape Cod to New York City to live with their mother and their new hard-drinking stepfather. They saw their father only during summers on the Cape, when they and the other neighborhood children would be left to their own...