I am American, educated, urban, reasonably well off, living in a nuclear family (or was until my children grew up and moved on), female. Only the last descriptor do I share with these women of whom Erika Friedl writes with such empathy and brilliance. Otherwise, our lives could not be more different. And her atypical (in the quality of its writing) ethnography gives us a vivid portrayal of the stories and circumstances of these women's lives. Yet, at the same time as we come to appreciate afresh how differences in accident of birth can bring real differences in the kinds of lives we end up living, we appreciate even more strongly what our lives ultimately share.