The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives » (Reprint)

Cheryl Jarvis is a journalist and essayist and the author of The Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home. Her byline has appeared in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Reader’s Digest. A former television producer and magazine and newspaper editor, she has taught writing at the University of Southern California and at Washington University and Webster University in St. Louis.

One day in Ventura, California, Jonell McLain saw a beautiful diamond necklace in a jewelry store window and wondered: Why are personal luxuries so plentiful yet accessible to so few? What if we shared what we desired? Several weeks, dozens of phone calls, and one great leap of faith later, Jonell and twelve other women bought the necklace together–to be passed along among them all.

The dazzling treasure weaves in and out of each woman’s life, reflecting her past, defining her present, making promises for her future. Lending sparkle in surprising and unexpected ways, the necklace comes to mean something dramatically different to each of the thirteen women. With vastly dissimilar histories and lives, they transcend their individual personalities and politics to join together in an uncommon journey–and what started as a quirky social experiment becomes something far richer and deeper.

Crystal Goldman - Library Journal

Freelance journalist Jarvis (The Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home) explores the lives of 13 women from Ventura, CA, from diverse social, educational, and political backgrounds who together purchased an expensive diamond necklace that was beyond their means individually. Cost: $37,000. Jonell McLain first saw the 16.25 carat necklace in a jeweler's window and came up with the idea for a group purchase. What began as a social experiment about ownership and American consumerism became much larger as the necklace took on a life of its own. The group of women, all over 50, used the necklace to generate attention for various fund-raising activities and to raise social awareness in their community. While Jarvis's prose is a bit sentimental, she does offer an engaging snapshot of what it means to be a middle-aged woman in contemporary America. Underlying the light treatment applied to each of the 13 narratives and mini-biographies that make up this work are the deeper issues of aging, health care, retirement, relationships, divorce, sex, and child rearing. A highly readable book recommended for public libraries and any library with an interest in women's studies or studies on growing older. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/08.]