"A powerful exploration of motherhood and feminism... this novel will
have readers examining their own 'what-ifs.'" -- Jill Santopolo, New
York Times bestselling author of Everything After
"[An] inventive novel about love, loss, identity, and
compromise."--Woman's Day
"Delves deep into love, motherhood, and the complicated dance that is
navigating the world as a woman." -- Claire Lombardo, New York Times
bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
A deeply moving novel about a woman who thought she never wanted to be
a mother--and the many ways that life can surprise us
Rose Napolitano is fighting with her husband, Luke, about prenatal
vitamins. She promised she'd take them, but didn't. He promised before
they got married that he'd never want children, but now he's changed his
mind. Their marriage has come to rest on this one question: Can Rose
find it in herself to become a mother? Rose is a successful professor
and academic. She's never wanted to have a child. The fight ends, and
with it their marriage.
But then, Rose has a fight with Luke about the vitamins--again. This
time the fight goes slightly differently, and so does Rose's future as
she grapples with whether she can indeed give up the one thing she
thought she knew about herself. Can she reimagine her life in a
completely new way? That reimagining plays out again and again in each
of Rose's nine lives, just as it does for each of us as we grow into
adulthood. What are the consequences of our biggest choices? How would
life change if we let go of our preconceived ideas of ourselves and
became someone completely new? Rose Napolitano's experience of choosing
and then choosing again shows us in an utterly compelling way what it
means, literally, to reinvent a life and, sometimes, become a different
kind of woman than we ever imagined.
A stunning novel about love, loss, betrayal, divorce, death, a woman's
career and her identity, The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano is about
finding one's way into a future that wasn't the future one planned, and
the ways that fate intercedes when we least expect it.
