About Aaker's A Woman's Odyssey

“Aaker’s confusions were shared by an entire generation of American women, the first to meet men as equals in the arena of work; and the only ones ever to know sexual freedom without fear… On the Clinton-Gore campaign trail… she writes essays… to her law firm… which is the best writing in the book—vigorous, sure and shot through with trenchant wit.” —Dallas Morning News

“Linda Aaker has taken her timely and personal journal and shared all of its moments of love, politics, marriage, and the birth of her child with us. It is important because it reflects the thinking of a very contemporary young woman, striving to extract all the important moments of life. It is enjoyable because all of us will relive some of our own struggles through her eyes.” —Liz Carpenter

“Linda Aaker is a warm, thoughtful person who has Texas-size passions. Her love affair with her husband is to be envied, and together they had a front-row seat for political drama that she shares in a moving way.” —Sarah Weddington

A hippie antiwar protester turned antitrust lawyer tells of coming of age in the 80s. Politics and passion are spiked with humor and searching in this compelling tale of a modern woman’s journey to life’s middle years. From shooting deer in Texas to shooting pictures in the Himalayas, from enduring the dating scene to becoming a mother, from hitch-hiking alone in Guatemala to traveling with Bill and Hillary Clinton on the pre-election Texas bus trip, Aaker’s world is real and deeply honest.

Although the specific details are only one woman’s experiences, this book is, in a sense, the story of every woman who came of age at the start of the women’s movement in the 70s. It chronicles the win/loss cycles faced by any woman who chooses to have both career and family.

Entry from 1978: When I read of pollution and inflation and Rhodesia and Nicaragua, chills runs down my body and I’m scared, thinking of the world to come, my own financial insecurity, and whether I really want to bring a child into this world. What will happen to me if I don’t become more responsible? It’s all fine to be a young “hippie-type” bureaucrat/lawyer. But will that be enough at fifty, and with the responsibility for another human being? Not giant worries, but sobering thoughts in the midst of my life-for-the-moment world.