The Lunar Housewife

Louise Leithauser realizes that women in 1953 must fight for control of their own lives. While society expects her to get married and settle down, she is determined to be a writer, so she seizes an opportunity to write for Downtown magazine. Louise is given a plum assignment when Ernest Hemingway agrees to an interview, so long as his interviewer is a “girl reporter.” Through overheard conversations, she hears rumors of the CIA’s clandestine attempts to control the publishing industry. Meanwhile, she continues to write a romance novel about an American woman who volunteers for a Russian experiment on the moon. As Louise learns more about CIA activity, she incorporates her newfound knowledge into her story, but soon, this secret information puts her life in danger. Woods (Fräulein M.) skillfully weaves the telling of Louise’s life story and her fictional one, creating interesting and believable characters on both sides of the equation. Narrators Jeanna Phillips and Cindy Kay deliver a full range of emotions that reveal the pressures, expectations, and quiet resistance experienced by women of the era.