"I write character-centered fiction, which means it is almost never high concept, and my plots are neither tight nor ingenious... Most of what happens simply proceeds from the interaction of the characters with one another and their environment, their history, their circumstances." -Marge Piercy, "Life of Prose and Poetry: An Inspiring Combination," The New York Times, Dec. 20, 1999.

A teenager's secret menage a trois, a desperate suicide, a police shooting, a forbidden affair, and a mercy killing are just some of the events experienced by three women, all mothers and daughters, in Marge Piercy's immensely moving novel. Like all of us, these three women fashion their worlds from their habits and hopes only to encounter the unpredictable tragedies that shake or shatter us, leaving us fractured and changed -- but perhaps emerging from the pain, as Hemingway wrote, "stronger in the broken places." 

Told from each character's point of view in alternating chapters, Three Women lets us watch, like a peeping Tom through a window, the most intimate and emotional moments of three lives. Suzanne Blume, the first woman to teach Constitutional Law at a Boston university, is, at five foot three, "too small for her role in the world." Divorced, heading for menopause, and embracing life with gusto, she litigates explosive legal cases, has met an interesting man over the Internet, and is about to have her meticulously organized days thrown into chaos when both her difficult-to-please mother and troubled oldest daughter suddenly move into her home. 

Beverly, Suzanne's mother, has always been a firecracker. A political organizer for half a century, she has dared to take lovers, have a child on her own, and fight for justice in the factories and streets. An independent, feisty, opinionated woman, her raison d'être, or reason for existing, is to help others in need. A stroke is about to profoundly alter that. 

Elena, a ravishing dark-haired beauty now in her late twenties, is the "problem child" of the family. While her sister Rachel, clearly her mother's favorite, is studying to be a rabbi and planning her wedding, Elena has bounced from job to job. Haunted by a tragedy from her teenage years, she distances herself from her emotions, prefers sex to love, and now, fired again and adrift, she has come back home. 

With immense empathy and insight into women's feelings, Marge Piercy shows us what happens when these mothers and daughters are confronted by the conflicting forces of resentment and love. They face, in Suzanne's neat middle class home outside of Boston, a coming together that becomes a final chance to learn what they never have before -- how to appreciate each other's gifts and tolerate faults; how to balance one's own needs with the demands of family; and how to make the choices that are never easy, but that give us our dignity, release our passions, and allow us to be our authentic selves.