Surrender, Dorothy

For years, Sara Swerdlow was transported by an unfettered sense of immortality. Floating along on loving friendships and the adoration of her mother, Natalie, Sara's notion of death was entirely alien to her existence. But when a summer night's drive out for ice cream ends in tragedy, thirty-year-old Sara -- "held aloft and shimmering for years" -- finally lands.

Mining the intricate relationship between love and mourning, acclaimed novelist Meg Wolitzer explores a single, overriding question: who, finally, "owns" the excruciating loss of this young woman -- her mother or her closest friends? Depicting the aftermath of Sara's shocking death with piercing humor and shattering realism, Surrender, Dorothy is the luminously thoughtful, deeply moving exploration of what it is to be a mother and a friend, and, above all, what it takes to heal from unthinkable loss.

Meg Wolitzer, a recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, is the author of Sleepwalking, Hidden Pictures, This Is Your Life, and Friends for Life. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories 1998 and The 1999 Pushcart Prize. Wolitzer has taught at Skidmore College and at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in New York City.