Yearbook - Monique's Work-in-Progress

In the fall of 1965, four young women are thrown together in a dorm at Barnard College (the sister school of New York’s Columbia University).  They are Chantal, a Parisian, Yumi, a Japanese Hawaiian, Theresa, an Irish Catholic from South Boston, and Vivienne, a WASP from Lake Forest, Illinois.  For the next four years, they will grow up, facing the Vietnam War, the Columbia revolt, questions of religion, sex, and the basic problems of surviving at a Seven Sisters school.  When they graduate, they won’t be the same, and neither will their friendships.

Each subsequent decade will be viewed prismatically through one woman’s eyes. Told in her own distinctive voice, in first person, present tense, she will bear witness not only to her own story, but to that of the others; and then the torch will be passed.  The book ends in 2009 at their Fortieth Reunion.  Not all will be present.  Not all will be missed.  The conclusion will be startling, and yet realistic.

YEARBOOK has been a long time in the making.  It is dedicated to Monique’s Barnard friends, who have been the mainstay of her life and her beloved sisters.