2016 Audie Award Finalist for Best Female Narrator
New York Times bestseller!
An unforgettable novel about a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century, told âwith humor and optimismâŚthrough the eyes of an irresistible heroineâ (People)âfrom the acclaimed author of The Red Tent.
Anita Diamantâs âvivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhoodâ (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addieâs intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents canât imagineâa world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year-old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naĂŻve girl she once was.
Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Diamantâs previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one womanâs complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world. âDiamant brings to life a piece of feminismâs forgotten historyâ (Good Housekeeping) in this âinspirationalâŚpage-turning portrait of immigrant life in the early twentieth centuryâ (Booklist).