Jenna Bush Hager’s latest Today book club pick is what she calls a “big love story” set in Cold War–era America.
Hager selected Laura Moriarty’s Sunlight Finds You as the August pick for her club, Read With Jenna. The novel, set in 1949, follows Nora Chesnow, a Florida teen who is exiled to New Jersey after becoming pregnant with her lover’s child. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “a rich, rewarding slice of history that should remind us how important it is for women to have choices of all kinds.”
Hager announced the book’s selection on the Today show, saying, “This book is pure sunlight. It is the perfect summer read.…This is a novel about forgiveness, both of ourselves and others, and I could not put it down.”
Moriarty told Today.com that she wanted to write “a big love story…not exactly a romance, but a story about the way love can change a person and alter the course of [their] life.”
She said that she was diagnosed with cancer while writing the book and had to undergo jaw reconstruction surgery.
“I started thinking about…how going through something isolating and hard can make you more vulnerable for a while before it makes [you] wiser,” she said.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
