If there's one thing that women at the edge of the twenty-first century know, it's that, despite our new opportunities--or perhaps because of them--the search for a satisfying life is a complicated task. Whether we're single or married, with or without children, comfortable staying at home or confident at work, we often ruthlessly second-guess our choices. Are we shortchanging our kids, our careers, our partners, ourselves, with the decisions we make in our twenties and thirties? How real are our choices about sex, love, work, and kids? Do we want to be Donna Reed, Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, or Erin Brockovich? And who's trying to slot us into those categories anyway? Author Peggy Orenstein wondered about these things, too. So she read, researched, interviewed, dug deep, and wrote Flux to find out if women can indeed "be whatever we want to be." Or, if, as she writes, we're more likely to run into "very real obstacles that would block our paths and sometimes set us up, as adults, to blame ourselves when we failed to overcome them."

From 200 in-depth interviews of women aged twenty-five to forty-five, Orenstein offers insight into just about every permutation and combination of career, marriage, kids, singlehood, ambivalence, and certainty that exists. Her detailed examination of women's lives and of the choices they've made is engaging, challenging, and illuminating. The women she studies do the talking, while Orenstein puts their lives in context. Reading Flux is like eavesdropping on a conversation you wish you were part of. When you talk about Flux, you and your book group will become participants.