“Jeremy Gavron’s quest to find his mother has produced a groundbreaking book and moving portrait of a spirited young woman—a ‘captive wife’—who refused to accept the social constraints of her time. Unforgettable.”—Tina Brown
London, 1965
: A brilliant young woman has just gassed herself to death, leaving behind a note, two young sons, and a soon-to-be-published book. A promising academic and feminist at the dawn of modern feminism, no one had imagined Hannah Gavron might take her own life. Forty years later, her son Jeremy attempts to solve both this mystery of his mother’s death and the mystery of the mother he never had the chance to know. From the fragments of life she left behind, he ultimately uncovers not only Hannah’s struggle to carve out her place in a man’s world; he examines the constrictions on every ambitious woman in the mid-20th century.