"Riveting . . . While I Was Gone celebrates] what is impulsive in human nature."
-The New York Times

"Miller weaves her themes of secrecy, betrayal, and forgiveness into a narrative that shines."
-Time

Jo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving marriage, and a rewarding career. But she feels a sense of unease. Then an old housemate reappears, sending Jo back to a distant past when she lived in a communal house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn deeper into her memories of that fateful summer in 1968, Jo begins to obsess about the person she once was. As she is pulled farther from her present life, her husband, and her world, Jo struggles against becoming enveloped by her past and its dark secret.

" While I Was Gone] swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a woman's complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasies-and fears-about another man. . . . Miller writes] well about the trials of faith."
-The New York Times Book Review

"Quietly gripping . . . Jo shines steadily as the flawed and thoroughly modern heroine. As in her 1986 novel, The Good Mother, Miller shows how impulses can fracture the family."
-USA Today

"Marvelous . . . poignant . . . powerful."
-Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer

Author: Sue Miller
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 05/12/2000
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.5lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780345443281

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.4
Point Value: 16
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 49892 / While I Was Gone

About the Author
Sue Miller is the bestselling author of The God Mother, Inventing the Abbotts, Family Pitctures, For Love, and The Distinguished Guest. She lives in Boston.