Uncommon American Housewife

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A raucous, whip-smart collection of stories featuring retro-feminist ladies who lunch.” —Elle Meet the women of American Housewife. They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it’s cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies from the oven. Taking us from a haunted pre-war Manhattan apartment building to the unique initiation ritual of a book club, these twelve delightfully demented stories are a refreshing and wicked answer to the question: “What do housewives do all day?”

Kate Miller may be the last great American housewife left in Van Nuys. But as she sails toward forty on a wave of a pretty good (albeit somewhat boring) life with her husband and two kids, the death of her dysfunctional mother sends Kate out on a ledge and straight up a tree. Surveying her life from atop an endangered tree near the Fashion Square Plaza Mall, Kate learns more than how to fight for a cause. She learns how one frightened woman can actually discover her true self, one branch at a time and right down the street from her own backyard.

A mother-daughter story about the strong pull of tradition, and the lure and cost of breaking free of it. When Shoko decided to marry an American GI and leave Japan, she had her parents' blessing, her brother's scorn, and a gift from her husband-a book on how to be a proper American housewife. As she crossed the ocean to America, Shoko also brought with her a secret she would need to keep her entire life... Half a century later, Shoko's plans to finally return to Japan and reconcile with her brother are derailed by illness. In her place, she sends her grown American daughter, Sue, a divorced single mother whose own life isn't what she hoped for. As Sue takes in Japan, with all its beauty and contradictions, she discovers another side to her mother and returns to America unexpectedly changed and irrevocably touched.

This first joint biography of the Hoovers will reshape Herbert Hoover's image as a man who did little more than sit in the White House while the country suffered. Both Hoovers were dynamic, uncommon Americans who made enormous contributions to mankind, before, during, and after the presidency. Walch, Director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, brings together contributions from leading scholars who have conducted extensive research into the lives of this extraordinary couple, placing them in a national and international context. He hopes to entice more historians to delve into the intricacies of their lives.

Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop.