Reunion

In this revealing book, the stories of women's lives -- what happened to the class of '68 at New York's prestigious Brearley School -- are woven into a reflection on what makes for a successful woman's life. Journalist and 1968 Brearley graduate Elizabeth Fishel chronicles the internal and external forces that shaped the lives of an in-between generation, women raised in '50s and early '60s privilege to be genteel and intelligent helpmates, yet who witnessed on graduation in 1968 dramatic changes and transformation in sexual expectations and roles and in society, requiring them to adapt. Fishel considers what has happened to her classmates and the more general insights about why some women in this generation thrived, while others did not. Why did most women from the class of '68 not do quite as well as the women who graduated only five years later? Fishel investigates women's styles of coping, their methods and modes of shaping their own lives, and eventually, the lives of their children.

Fishel's story revolves around of the convergence of historical forces -- women's liberation, the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, Vietnam -- and personal changes -- going to college, falling in love, navigating a career course, marriage, having and raising children. Through compelling portraits of her classmates, Fishel outlines the copers, the strugglers, the traditionalists, and the unconventional career trackers from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, examining the decisions and strategies that worked, or didn't work. For the class of 1968, a year Time Magazine would say "shaped a generation, " growing up meant grappling with two sets of assumptions -- those of their conservative andtraditional upbringing and those of the counter-culture life around them. Fishel considers what it meant to be tom between two worlds, and explores where they are at midlife. Fishel looks at why this particular generation flowered or floudered, while the class only five years behind them had more consistently successful careers and family lives.

This book is filled with portraits of women: the success stories -- Alexa, Tess, Judith, and Fishel herself -- as well as the women who didn't cope quite as well, the less conventional stories -- Pamela, Maisie and Emma, as well as the tragedies -- the story of twins, Alice and Lily.