Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one woman’s passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.

Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat, looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes, receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her supercilious stepson – and attempting to find balance in a new family that’s both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel rich with humor and truth, perfectly characterizing one woman’s search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.

Ayelet (pronounced "I yell it") Waldman is the

Harvard Law graduate Emilia Greenleaf's perfect life with her beloved Jack is turned upside down by her new preschool-age stepson, William, a situation that is further complicated when she loses her own newborn daughter, but it is through William that she begins to heal and to discover what family really means. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Ayelet (pronounced "I yell it") Waldman is the author of Daughter's Keeper and of the Mommy-Track mystery series. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, Child magazine, and other publications, and she has a regular column on Salon.com. She and her husband, the novelist Michael Chabon, live in Berkeley, California, with their four children. www.ayeletwaldman.com