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Meg Waite Clayton’s national bestseller The Wednesday Sisters was a word-of-mouth sensation and book club favorite. Now the beloved author is back with a page-turning novel that explores the secrets we keep, even from those closest to us, and celebrates the enduring power of friendship.
Mia, Laney, Betts, and Ginger, best friends since law school, have reunited for a long weekend as Betts awaits Senate confirmation of her appointment to the Supreme Court. Nicknamed “the Ms. Bradwells” during their first class at the University of Michigan Law School in 1979 - when only three women had ever served full Senate terms and none had been appointed to the Court - the four have supported one another through life’s challenges: marriages and divorces, births and deaths, career setbacks and triumphs large and small. Betts was, and still is, the Funny One. Ginger, the Rebel. Laney, the Good Girl. And Mia, the Savant.
But when the Senate hearings uncover a deeply buried skeleton in the friends' collective closet, the Ms. Bradwells retreat to a summer house on the Chesapeake Bay, where they find themselves reliving a much darker period in their past - one that stirs up secrets they've kept for, and from, one another, and could change their lives forever.
Once again, Meg Waite Clayton writes inspiringly about the complex circumstances facing women and the heartfelt friendships that hold them together. Insightful and affecting, The Four Ms. Bradwells is also a captivating tale of how far people will go to protect the ones they love.
"Clayton finds some traction in discussing what it means to be a woman in both public and private life, but lack of individuated voices...and unruly swerves between past and present make following the story more work than it should be." - Publishers Weekly
"As she did in her best-selling The Wednesday Sisters, Clayton here explores female relationships but far less engagingly...Still, fans of...female friendship fiction will find much to captivate them." - Library Journal
"Though Clayton telegraphs her political points along with her plot and characterizations, there is a definite market for this kind of self-congratulatory women's empowerment." - Kirkus Reviews
"Meg Waite Clayton writes with intelligence, wisdom, and humor about women's friendships. To steal from Holden Caulfield, after reading The Four Ms. Bradwells, you'll wish the characters were terrific friends of yours and you could call them up on the phone whenever you felt like it." - Tatjana Soli, New York Times bestselling author of The Lotus Eaters
"An exquisitely written novel about the heartbreaking and heartwarming moments of life and friendship and everything in between, The Four Ms. Bradwells will resonate with you long after you've turned the final page on these wonderful women. Don't miss a second of their journey." - Allison Winn Scotch, New York Times bestselling author of Time of My Life and The One That I Want
This information about The Four Ms. Bradwells was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
New York Times and international bestseller and book club favorite Meg Waite Clayton is the author of nine novels, including Typewriter Beach (Harper, July 1, 2025). Her prior novels include the international bestsellers The Postmistress of Paris (a Good Morning America Buzz Book, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Publishers Weekly notable book, and a Costco Book Club, People Magazine, Indie Next booksellers, LoanStars librarian, Book of the Month, USA Today, and Amazon Editors' pick which the San Francisco Chronicle calls "'Casablanca' if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful"); The Last Train to London (a National Jewish Book Award finalist Kristin Hannah calls "an absolutely fascinating, beautifully rendered story of love, loss, and heroism"); The Wednesday Sisters (...
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