pt. 1. Family with fissures : 1968-1976 -- pt. 2. A new life : 1976-1989
Summary
A second-year doctoral student from a midwestern family, the author is twenty-three when she marries a German professor ten years her senior. Previously sheltered, she seeks new vistas but instead finds herself confined by the demands of her life: wife to a volatile and domineering husband, mother of two young daughters, and aspiring academic. With her dissertation completed, she finally realizes that the only way to wrest her identity and freedom from her husband's grip is by leaving him; she boards a bus with her two young children to embark on a new life. This memoir recounts her struggle for independence and a career while remaining devoted to her daughters
