The Book Club For Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick, EXCERPT

The Book Club For Troublesome Women

“This is a novel about ambitious women and the mentors that inspired them to excellence . . . Bostwick carves an unforgettable path for her characters.”–Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone

Margaret Ryan never really meant to start a book club . . . or a feminist revolution in her buttoned-up suburb.

By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman’s dream. She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia–one of Northern Virginia’s most exclusive and picturesque suburbs. She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman’s Place–a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy. On paper, she has it all. So why doesn’t that feel like enough?

Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia’s newest and most intriguing resident. As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte’s orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women–Bitsy and Viv–to the inaugural meeting. As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they’d been sold isn’t all roses and sunshine–and that their secret longing for more is something they share. Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments–and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives.

The Book Club for Troublesome Women is a humorous, thought provoking, and nostalgic romp through one pivotal and tumultuous American year–as well as an ode to self-discovery, persistence, and the power of sisterhood.

“Bostwick’s latest is ideal for fans of historical fiction and those who enjoyed Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, Kristin Hannah’s The Women, or Kate Quinn’s The Briar Club, which explore the historical roles of women and the challenges they faced within a society structured to define and limit their roles in and out of the home.” —Library Journal Starred Review

Excerpted from The Book Club for Troublesome Women, by Marie Bostwick. Harper Muse, 2025. Reprinted with permission.

On a Wednesday morning in March 1963, twenty-five miles and yet a world away from the nation’s capital and the rumblings of change that were beginning to be felt there, in a northern Virginia suburb called Concordia, so new that the roots of the association-approved saplings were still struggling to take root, and so meticulously planned that when the first wave of residents moved in the year before, the shops, library, and church opened on the very same day, as if God smote the ground and a fully formed suburb had erupted from the crack, Margaret Ryan stood in a sunny kitchen with appliances and matching Formica countertops of egg-yolk yellow, trying to decide what to serve the three women who would be coming to the first meeting of her new book club.

Beth Ryan, eleven years old and the eldest of Margaret’s three children, peered over her mother’s shoulder, shaking her head at the small mountain of recipes Margaret had torn from her extensive collection of women’s magazines.

“Why so many? Why not bake oatmeal cookies and be done with it like any normal mother?” Beth snatched a recipe clipping from the stack. “Anchovy and cream cheese canapés? If that’s dinner, I’m eating at Melanie’s.”

Every family has its smart-ass. Beth was theirs.

With her strawberry-blond hair and enviably long lashes, Beth was the image of her father. But her cheek was pure Margaret, and a payback, Margaret was sure, for the sins of her youth. When her own mother was still alive, she had cursed Margaret countless times, saying, “When you grow up, I hope you have a daughter that’s as fresh as you are. Then you’ll know.”

Now she did know, and it wasn’t so bad. Margaret liked that her daughter knew her own mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it. It was an underappreciated quality in women, one that often faded with age.

At age seventeen, Margaret had promised herself that she would grow up to be nothing like her mother. After a promising start, the fruit of her early efforts had shriveled. Now, at age thirty-three, Margaret sometimes wondered if every woman was destined to become her mother eventually. Recently, however, things had started to shift.

And not just for Margaret.

As with any seismic occurrence, the impact would be felt more keenly by some than others, and responses to it would vary widely. Some would embrace the change. Some would decry it. Some would avert their eyes and pretend nothing had happened. It didn’t come all at once, of course. Meaningful change rarely does. There would be more rumblings, more waves, more altercations in decades to come. But in the fullness of time, no one could deny that landscapes and lives had been irrevocably transformed.

Nevertheless, Margaret didn’t fully appreciate that yet. Neither did she understand that the impulses she’d given in to over the last three months and the secrets she kept—including the rented seafoam-green typewriter she’d hidden in the far reaches of the linen closet—would alter her family, her future, and her sense of self. Today she was just excited about the book club, thrilled to be the point of connection for the other three women who had agreed to take part, some more reluctantly than others, and determined to make their first meeting memorable. 

Without the assistance of an alarm, Margaret’s eyes had flown open promptly at five that morning. Walt hadn’t come home from the VFW until well after midnight, so there was little chance of disturbing him, but she slipped quietly from bed and tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom anyway. Why risk endangering her good spirits with some pointless confrontation? 

Half an hour later, she emerged with her chestnut hair curled and sprayed into a shoulder-length flip, wearing lipstick, heels, and a black watch tartan jumper over a cream-colored blouse, as polished and pulled together as any magazine model. Coming downstairs for breakfast, the kids had hovered on the kitchen threshold, confused to see her looking so smart so early in the day.

“Is it Sunday?” six-year-old Susan whispered to Beth, who shook her head but didn’t budge from the doorway. Bobby, eight years old but already the tallest in his class and perpetually famished, broke the spell. “Mom? Can we have waffles? And bacon?”

“Waffles are for Saturdays,” Margaret said, chewing her lip as she scanned an ingredient list for turkey and mushroom roll-ups. “Have some cereal. There was a new kind at the market.”

Bobby trotted to the cupboard and let out a whoop.

“Cap’n Crunch! That’s the one from the TV! You are the best mom ever!”

He threw his arms around her waist. Margaret patted his back. He was so easy to please.

“Slice some banana on top,” she said. Despite the cereal company’s claims about vitamins, feeding her brood a sugarcoated breakfast with a cartoon captain spokesman didn’t make her feel like the best mom ever. Tomorrow she’d make scrambled eggs.

“Suzy,” she said, noticing the child had missed a button on her cardigan, “come here.”

Susan, who most closely resembled Margaret in looks, hopped up from the banquette. She stood perfectly still when Margaret knelt to rebutton her sweater, examining her mother’s face. 

“How come you’re so dressed up? Are you going to the doctor?”

“My book club is tonight, remember? It’s our first meeting, so I’m excited.”

“You don’t look excited. You look nervous.”

“Well . . .” Margaret picked a pill off Susan’s cardigan. “It’s always a little scary, isn’t it? Getting to know new people, letting them get to know you? So, yes. I am a little nervous. But also excited.”

“Like I felt on the first day at our new school?”

“Something like that. Go finish your breakfast.”

Beth tilted her chin toward a bright red book lying next to the coffee percolator Walt and Margaret had received as a premium for opening a new checking account.

“Is that what you’re reading?”

“Uh-huh.” Deciding that Beth had a point about anchovies, Margaret moved the canapé recipe to the reject pile. “It came out just last month.”

Beth picked up the book, lips moving silently as she sounded out the title.

“What does mystique mean?”

Margaret hesitated. Their bookstore order had been delayed, so she’d only had time to read the first few chapters. Even so, the declarations she encountered there were electric, jolting a shrouded, dormant part of her brain to life with ideas that seemed utterly fresh but also uncannily familiar. Reading about the strange stirrings and unnamed problem, knowing she wasn’t the only one who had wondered why “having it all” somehow wasn’t enough, had left Margaret awash with relief and an unexpected sense of vindication, akin to the moment she’d first spotted Charlotte Gustafson in the drugstore—a complete stranger who still barely qualified as an acquaintance—and somehow known they were in sympathy.

Charlotte had called the book groundbreaking. Margaret agreed. Would the others feel the same? As if they’d been unburdened of a shameful secret? Reprieved from a long, lonely, and unjust exile?

“Mom? Mystique?”

“It’s . . . a kind of aura, a sense of mystery or power, a sort of magical reputation attached to a person or group. But I don’t think that’s really what the author meant here. I think she’s saying a mystique can be a lie, or even a kind of diversion.”

“Sounds boring.” Beth tossed the book aside. “Who’s in the club?”

“So far, it’s just me, Viv, Bitsy, and Mrs. Gustafson.”

“Mrs. Gustafson? The new neighbor? People say she’s an oddball.”

“You shouldn’t be listening to what people say. Or repeating it,” Margaret said. “Anyway, Charlotte’s not an oddball. She’s just different, artistic, a freethinker. Heaven knows we could use a few more of those in Concordia.”

Beth frowned. “What’s wrong with Concordia? I like it here.”

“Nothing,” Margaret said, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “I like it too. It’s just that sometimes the people here can be a bit . . .”

Margaret searched for a word to sum up the conflicting emotions she felt regarding their new home, but her lifelong facility with language, which she’d honed to an even sharper edge over the previous three months, failed her. How could she explain her love-hate relationship with Concordia to her little girl when she didn’t really understand it herself?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marie Bostwick is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty works of uplifting contemporary and historical fiction. Translated into a dozen languages, Marie’s novels are beloved by readers across the globe. Her 2009 book, A Thread of Truth, was an “Indie Next Notable” pick. Three of her books were published as Reader’s Digest “Select Editions.” Marie lives in Washington state with her husband and a beautiful but moderately spoiled Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Connect with her online at mariebostwick.com; Facebook: @mariebostwick; Instagram: @mariebostwick; Pinterest: @fiercelymarie

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers