This is a dramatic social novel, a successful entwining of people that comes to signify the Big Moment of history. Cooke, who not once lets a sentence flag, who can reinvent the known with imagery so fine it feels like a dare, evokes the dawn of women’s liberation, the righteous struggles for sexual voice….her profound, honest compassion for all her characters, men and women, makes them so engrossing, you almost forget what they’re up against. ”