<p>From the <i>New York Times</i> best-selling author of <i>Commencement </i>and <i>Maine</i> comes a gorgeous, sprawling novel about marriage - about those who marry in a white heat of passion, those who marry for partnership and comfort, and those who live together, love each other, and have absolutely no intention of ruining it all with a wedding.<br><br> Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years - forty years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love - the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it's over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife's family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding - beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings - and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own. <br><br> As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: "A Diamond Is Forever." And that line changes everything.<br><br> A rich, layered, exhilarating novel spanning nearly a hundred years, <i>The Engagements</i> captures four wholly unique marriages, while tracing the story of diamonds in America, and the way - for better or for worse - these glittering stones have come to symbolize our deepest hopes for everlasting love.<br></p>
