Rebecca and her beautiful, reckless friend Alex dream of lives beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. Their struggle to define themselves against the backdrop of an American cultural revolution unites them, until one sweltering summer evening, when a single act of betrayal changes everything.

TWO LIVES. ONE STORY.

Coming of age in the patrician neighborhood of Pasadena, California, during the 1960s, Rebecca Madden and her beautiful, reckless friend Alex dream of lives beyond white gloves and cocktail parties, beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. As change sweeps the nation--civil rights, Vietnam, women's liberation--the two girls' determination to chart a different course brings them closer, until one sweltering evening the summer before their last year of college, when a single act of betrayal changes everything. Decades later, Rebecca's haunting meditation on the past reveals the truth about that night, the years that followed, and the friendship that shaped her. A confession of hopes long forgotten, Aria Beth Sloss' Autobiography of Us is an achingly beautiful portrait of a decades-long bond and the victories, sacrifices, and defeats of a generation.