Making People Happy

Cicily Hamilton has opinions. The problem is, no one asked for them. It's 1908, and Cicily finds herself presiding over the Civitas Club, a society of respectable women gathered to discuss their emancipation with great passion and precious little direction. The meetings dissolve into chaos. The speeches ring hollow. And Cicily must confront an uncomfortable truth: she is equally frustrated by the club's futility and by her own marriage, which offers comfort but not purpose. Thompson Buchanan writes with sharp wit and genuine compassion about the particular cage of early twentieth-century womanhood: the expectation to want only what one has, to find fulfillment in duties that quietly starve the soul. This is a novel about the moment a woman looks at her carefully constructed life and asks, is this all there is? For anyone who has ever sat in a meeting about change and wondered why nothing ever changes.