The electrifying new novel from Lillian Fishman, author of Acts of Service, exploring our modern morals and mores in one young woman’s pursuit of experience

Everyone had a love story, but hers would be distinguished. It would mark her. She wanted to be so marked.

Prima arrives for her first year at college determined to enter the “lawless, sumptuous” world of true adulthood. When she begins an intimate relationship with her literature professor, the popular and enigmatic Heiss, she feels as if she has finally crossed into the terrain of womanhood. But Prima’s experience is not only her own: she is on the radar of faculty and former students, eager to protect young women from encounters they may regret, or regard differently, later.

But Prima isn’t interested in the court of public opinion. What Prima wants more than anything is to grow up.

Expertly pulling apart ideas of freedom and power, Women & Children explores the catch-22 of youth and the apparent contradiction we all experience in the pursuit of what we want. Is Prima’s a grand love story, or a grave misuse of power? Are we capable of anticipating how we’ll feel about experiences we had when we were younger? And what does retrospect steal from us?

Women & Children establishes Lillian Fishman as one of our most riveting, and most incisive, writers at work today.