The Trouble with You

Ellen Feldman

In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each...

Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II, when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble with You is the story of Fanny Fabricant, whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Educated for a career as a wife and mother, she is torn between her cousin Mimi, who is determined to keep her a “nice girl,” and her aunt Rose, who has a rebellious past of her own.

Forging a new life, she gets a job in radio serials. Then through her friendship with an actress who stars in and a man who writes the series, she comes face-to-face with the blacklist, which is wrecking lives.

Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light-years away and strangely immediate.