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Vivian's Decision: A Novel by author

Della Leavitt

Chicago. 1956.

One overwhelmed mother.

Four young children.

Seven days to make an impossible decision.

A multi-generational, Jewish family saga about a 1956 woman aching to claim an identity beyond wife and mother.  Chicagoan Della Leavitt credits the vibrant Chicago-area writing community, the Off Campus Writers' Workshop (OCWW) and the Women's Fiction Writers Association (WFWA), a Newberry Library fellowship, and City of Chicago grant to support publication of her debut novel.

Praise for Vivian's Decision: A Novel

Vivian's Decision is singular: a book about a wife and mother facing an unwanted pregnancy in the '50s, with flashbacks to earlier decades that speak to generational plights of women desperate for rights over their own bodies. This is not just about pregnancy; it's about freedom, choices, marriage, parenthood, the crushing expectations faced by stay-at-home mothers, and the constraints of the book's time periods.

The BookLife Prize

Debut novelist Leavitt shoots straight for the heart with this pitch-perfect historical fiction.

BookLife Review, May, 2026 "Editor's Pick"

dellaleavitt.com (c) 2026

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