To Jennifer Weiner:

THANK YOU for the Great American Novel

Written by a woman about women (of my generation!)

Dear Jennifer:

This old lady was up until 2 AM, Jennifer Weiner, reading your book and I’ve been proclaiming it the great American novel on every social media I frequent! Tell Jonathan Franzen to put that in his pipe and inhale deeply!!!

You capture my generation of female baby boomers in a variety of ways and narratives. We are much maligned. I even get the critique from my own daughter and sometimes from my own memories.

I have to admit I have none of your narratives in my own history. In the late 1960s, I was literally locked up in nursing school (yep, they locked us in). By 1968 I was an RN working on the most difficult unit in the hospital and then by 1970 I was married with a baby girl.So I lived vicariously through Bethie and Jo’s lives.

I was going to give my copy to our small library, Oley Valley Community Library for their stacks, so more women will have the chance to read it. But first I’ll promote it at the library’s writers meeting (small group of women, some of my generation). It’s not that a Jennifer Weiner novel needs promotion — your writing does that/has been doing that. But you, you young whippersnapper, have given us old biddies a voice! Bethie‘s’…