The Road Taken

Author Rona Jaffe
Ebook
On sale Feb 18, 2014 | 520 Pages | 9780698150935

The masterful author of Class Reunion offers this ambitious story of choices, chances and fate, spanning four generations of an unforgettable American family.
 
Rose Smith is born in the very beginning of 1900, the year that ushered in the most rapidly changing century in history. At the age of ten, Rose loses her mother and must learn to become independent and adaptable. As she grows up and begins a family of her own, she and her three daughters are a vital part of the country’s rapid growth during a turbulent era.
 
These women—all different, all fiercely-willed—will make courageous, sometimes reckless choices in their lives as they move boldly through a new world. Yet they will be united by an inner strength that will withstand life’s most chaotic demands, helping each to accept tragedy, embrace joy and, ultimately, find redemption.
 
PRAISE FOR RONA JAFFE
 
“Reading Rona Jaffe is like being presented with a Cartier watch: you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s exactly what you want.”—Cosmopolitan
 
“Vivid and trenchant…Wry and very readable…A minor genius.”—New York Times Book Review
 
“Jaffe has not lost her wit, her keen eye for human frailties and her ear for the small but telling remark.”—Publishers Weekly
Rona Jaffe was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1931. She was the daughter of Samuel Jaffe, a high school principal, and Diana (née Ginsberg) Jaffe, the daughter of Moses Ginsberg, the construction magnate who built the Carlyle Hotel. Rona was raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and was a lifelong New Yorker. She attended the Dalton School and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 at the age of 19. In her early twenties she worked at Fawcett Publications, starting as a file clerk and working her way up to associate editor. At twenty-five she quit her job to focus on a novel she had started about women in the publishing industry. In 1958 The Best of Everything was published by Simon & Schuster. The work, provocative and prescient, hit a nerve among readers, especially women, and became an overnight success and bestseller. The following year a film adaptation was released starring Joan Crawford, Hope Lange, Suzy Parker, and Diane Baker. Jaffe went on to write sixteen more books during her career including Class Reunion, Mr. Right Is Dead, The Other Woman, Family Secrets, The Road Taken, and The Room-Mating Season. In 1995, she established The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards, a program to identify and support promising emergent women writers, which provided over $3 million in grants during its 26-year history. Jaffe’s legacy continues through her Foundation and its funding of important areas of societal and cultural need. Rona Jaffe died of cancer in 2005. View titles by Rona Jaffe

About

The masterful author of Class Reunion offers this ambitious story of choices, chances and fate, spanning four generations of an unforgettable American family.
 
Rose Smith is born in the very beginning of 1900, the year that ushered in the most rapidly changing century in history. At the age of ten, Rose loses her mother and must learn to become independent and adaptable. As she grows up and begins a family of her own, she and her three daughters are a vital part of the country’s rapid growth during a turbulent era.
 
These women—all different, all fiercely-willed—will make courageous, sometimes reckless choices in their lives as they move boldly through a new world. Yet they will be united by an inner strength that will withstand life’s most chaotic demands, helping each to accept tragedy, embrace joy and, ultimately, find redemption.
 
PRAISE FOR RONA JAFFE
 
“Reading Rona Jaffe is like being presented with a Cartier watch: you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s exactly what you want.”—Cosmopolitan
 
“Vivid and trenchant…Wry and very readable…A minor genius.”—New York Times Book Review
 
“Jaffe has not lost her wit, her keen eye for human frailties and her ear for the small but telling remark.”—Publishers Weekly

Author

Rona Jaffe was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1931. She was the daughter of Samuel Jaffe, a high school principal, and Diana (née Ginsberg) Jaffe, the daughter of Moses Ginsberg, the construction magnate who built the Carlyle Hotel. Rona was raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and was a lifelong New Yorker. She attended the Dalton School and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 at the age of 19. In her early twenties she worked at Fawcett Publications, starting as a file clerk and working her way up to associate editor. At twenty-five she quit her job to focus on a novel she had started about women in the publishing industry. In 1958 The Best of Everything was published by Simon & Schuster. The work, provocative and prescient, hit a nerve among readers, especially women, and became an overnight success and bestseller. The following year a film adaptation was released starring Joan Crawford, Hope Lange, Suzy Parker, and Diane Baker. Jaffe went on to write sixteen more books during her career including Class Reunion, Mr. Right Is Dead, The Other Woman, Family Secrets, The Road Taken, and The Room-Mating Season. In 1995, she established The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards, a program to identify and support promising emergent women writers, which provided over $3 million in grants during its 26-year history. Jaffe’s legacy continues through her Foundation and its funding of important areas of societal and cultural need. Rona Jaffe died of cancer in 2005. View titles by Rona Jaffe