Over the past seven years journalist and essayist Marcelle Clements asked over one hundred women -- young and old, never married, divorced, and widowed, the childless and single mothers -- to talk to her about being single. How did they get there? Were they sorry or glad? What is the texture of their experience? They spoke with stunning frankness and eloquence on subjects such as power, status, money, class, family, sense of home, romance, love, sex, fears of old age and death, and the future of gender. The Improvised Woman is the groundbreaking result: a powerful portrait, in their own words and in the probing essay/introduction by Marcelle Clements, of women whose ever-changing lives defy easy categorization even as they shatter the crude stereotypes of the past.

The change in the status and psyche of single women from Cosmo icon to powerful sociocultural player is perhaps the most significant trend of our time. Moving, funny, immensely readable, The Improvised Woman is the first book to take the measure of this development, and women everywhere are certain to say "It's about time".