American Woman (51 page)

SUSAN CHOI
was born in Indiana and grew up in Texas. Her first novel,
The Foreign Student
, won the Asian-American Literary Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Discover Great New Writers Award at Barnes & Noble. With David Remnick, she edited an anthology of fiction entitled
Wonderful Town: New York Stories from “The New Yorker
.” In 2004, Susan Choi was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Also by Susan Choi

The Foreign Student

Praise

P
RAISE
F
OR

American Woman

“[
American Woman
] takes a hard-eyed look at American idealism, and yet its imaginative abundance, its fascination with self-invention, and its portrayal of the landscape as a living, breathing presence provide a quintessentially American sense of possibility.”

—
The New Yorker

“A brilliant read. . . . Astonishing in its honesty and confidence.
American Woman
is a haunting book.”

—
Denver Post

“With wit and empathy . . .
American Woman
first and foremost examines a young radical's eroding moral certainty. But it also mines the tragicomic elements inherent in good intentions gone murderously awry. Its great achievement is the tale of the shrill, the obnoxious, the armed and dangerous told in a wondrously beautiful voice.”

—Boston Globe

“
American Woman
is a riveting, deeply affecting portrait of a young antiwar radical and her turbulent times. With uncompromising grace and mastery, Susan Choi renders the intimate moments that bring to life a tale of prodigious sweep. It is a beautifully wrought, exceptionally powerful novel.”

—Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize—winning author of
Interpreter of Maladies
and
The Namesake

“An artful, insightful meditation on the radical impulse. . . . Jenny's wrenching struggle to come to terms with what she's done makes the book resonate with compassion and regret.”

—Dan Cryer,
Newsday

“Extraordinary generosity and grace. . . . The author, perhaps as successfully and as powerfully as anyone has, makes us understand how it felt, what it was like. . . . [An] assured, accomplished work.”

—San Diego Union-Tribune

“A tightly plotted thriller that is also an imaginative thought experiment conducted with the past. . . . Brilliant and often hilarious. . . . Choi has a whole continent, as well as an epoch, in her sights.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Prepare to be held hostage by Susan Choi's mesmerizing
American Woman
.”

—
Vanity Fair

“A hypnotic, winding route through the scorched emotional landscape of 1974. . . . Choi's prose radiates intelligence as she traces circles around Jenny and Pauline—near enough that you can feel their warmth, but not so close that you'd ever nail them down.”

—
Village Voice

“Susan Choi in this second novel proves herself a natural—a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability. I couldn't put
American Woman
down, and wanted when I finished it to do nothing but read it again.”

—Joan Didion

“Choi is a gifted prose stylist and composer of lovely, lingering paragraphs. . . . But even more than that,
American Woman
is a thoughtful, meditative interrogation of . . . history and politics, of power and racism, and, finally, of radicalism.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“Riveting. . . . Choi has the rare gift of bringing such notorious moments of history back to life and making them altogether new.”

—
Vogue

“Few writers since Graham Greene have brought such tender, insightful, poetic, intelligent, darkly comic writing to the political thriller. I have to admit this novel made me frantic with suspense—all I wanted to do was jump in and save its unforgettable protagonist from her excruciating destiny.”

—Francisco Goldman

“Masterfully plotted. . . .
American Woman
is that rarest of creations, a political novel that gives equal weight to its characters' inner and outer lives.”

—Laura Miller, Salon.com

“Brilliant. . . . Choi's insightful understanding, vivid description, lyrical use of language, and deft dialogue make it an overall reading pleasure.”

—Oregonian

“An amazing sense of control . . . [and] a compelling exactness. . . . Fantasy confronts fantasy in the confusion that gives rise to love, to hatred, to politics. And to gunshots.”

—
Los Angeles Times

“What I find so genuinely exhilarating about Choi's project is her old-fashioned intrepidness, her desire to plunder history without apology in order to recover its heart.”

—Minna Proctor,
Bookforum

“Enthralling. . . . It is Choi's skill at getting inside the heads of her protagonists that gives the novel its particular, unsettling appeal [and] . . . grainy psychological depth and texture.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Choi crafts complex, believable characters whose lives intersect with American politics over issues of loss and betrayal, economics and identity. How it all comes together in an engrossing and emotive story is testament to Choi's deft narration . . . [and] unwavering, original voice.”

—
Library Journal

“Intellectually provocative and vividly imagined.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

Copyright

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2003 by HarperCollins Publishers.

AMERICAN WOMAN
. Copyright © 2003 by Susan Choi. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

F
IRST
P
ERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2004.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Choi, Susan.

American woman : a novel / Susan Choi.—1st ed.

           
p.   cm.

ISBN 0-06-054221-7

         
1. Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.)—Fiction. 2. Fugitives from justice—Fiction. 3. Women revolutionaries—Fiction. 4. Kidnapping victims—Fiction. 5. Women terrorists—Fiction. 6. Social isolation—Fiction. 7. Women radicals—Fiction. 8. Young women—Fiction. 9. California—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.H584A64 2003

813'.54—dc21

ISBN 0-06-054222-5 (pbk.)

EPub Edition June 2014 ISBN 9780062365286

2002191935

         
14
/
RRD
10 9 8 7

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

http://www.harpercollins.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

Unit D, 63 Apollo Drive

Rosedale 0632

Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

195 Broadway

New York, NY 10007

http://www.harpercollins.com