A dazzling, decades-spanning tale of female friendship, love, and the pursuit of dreams in gritty 1990s New York City.
New York, 1997. As the city's rough edges are polished into something safer and shinier, two aspiring writers meet at a music magazine. Rose—bold and self-assured—is a staff writer. Charlotte—cautious and literary—is an editor. Initially wary, they soon recognize in each other an unmatched ambition. They become inseparable, turning every day into an adventure and believing they will undoubtedly achieve extraordinary things.
Together, Charlotte and Rose find and lose love, hit their strides and stumble, and make choices that resonate long past. They promise, "Don't ever leave me"—their favorite joke, but also their truest words. But then the steady rhythm of their sisterhood falls out of sync. They've seen each other through marriage, motherhood, divorce, career triumphs and defeats, and countless small but significant decisions. What will it mean if they must give up their shared dreams? Can they reconcile with the lives they've chosen and find peace with the ones they didn't?
In Carlene Bauer's smart, comic, and gloriously exuberant Girls They Write Songs About, two women reckon with the loss of the defining friendship of their lives and the countless ways all the women they've known have shaped them. This pulsing, lucid saga is a timeless story of the most essential bonds.