A historian explores the complicated relationship between womanhood and motherhood in this timely, refreshingly open-hearted study of the choices women make and the cards they’re dealt.

In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others—the vast majority, then and now—who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone.

Drawing on deep research and her own experience as a woman without children, historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the past: a lack of support, their jobs or finances, environmental concerns, infertility, and the desire to live different kinds of lives. Understanding this history—how normal it has always been to not have children, and how hard society has worked to make it seem abnormal—is key, she writes, to rebuilding kinship between mothers and non-mothers, and to building a better world for us all.

Paradise, the first book in the Second Opportunities series, is a tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. It follows the story of corporate raider Matthew Farrell, who has transformed from a poor, scruffy kid from Indiana's steel mills into a powerful figure courted by world leaders and closely watched by the media. Matthew is prepared to move in on the Bancroft empire, a legendary department store chain.

Meredith Bancroft, a cool and composed executive in her family's business, once defied her father to marry the intensely magnetic Matt Farrell, leading to a short-lived and disastrous marriage. Now, with the Bancroft firm facing a hostile takeover, Meredith must face Matt once again. As the tension between them escalates, they are haunted by memories that are both sweet and painful. Suspicion and restlessness grow, and they are left wondering if they can trust each other and seize the chance at a tender miracle that lies before them.