The Pursuit of Happiness: A Novel [Paperback]

This international bestseller tells the “romantic, sweeping” (Library Journal) love story of Sara and Jack as they learn to understand their differences in postwar New York.

Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945.

The war is over, and Eric Smythe’s party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara, an independent, outspoken young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked Jack Malone, a US Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, a man whose world view was vastly different than that of Eric and his friends.

This chance meeting between Sara and Jack and the choices they both made in the wake of it would eventually have profound consequences, both for themselves and for those closest to them for decades afterwards.

Set amidst the dynamic optimism of postwar New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy era,The Pursuit of Happinessis a great, tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices and the random workings of destiny.Douglas Kennedy is the author of several novels, including the international bestsellersThe MomentandFive Days. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages, and in 2007 he received the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He divides his time among London, New York, and Montreal, and has two children. Find out more at DouglasKennedyNovelist.com.One

I FIRST SAW her standing near my mother’s coffin. She was in her seventies – a tall, angular woman, with fine grey hair gathered in a compact bun at the back of her neck. She looked the way I hope to look if I ever make it to her birthday. She stood very erect, her spine refusing to hunch over with age. Her bone structure was flawless. Her skin had stayed smooth. Whatever wrinkles she had didn’t cleave her face. Rather, tl³!