In early August on a Saturday night this past hot summer, I wanted to go dancing at the Portuguese American Club.

In 2004, the novel Suite Francaise was awarded the Renaudot Prize, a glittering prize for fiction in France. This astounded the literary world because the author, Irene Nemirovsky, had been dead and mostly forgotten for over 60 years.

Barbara Bick says she is neither journalist nor historian. Despite what she says, she looks at the worlds she encounters with the curiosity of a journalist, the eye of a historian — and always with the passion of a feminist. Rarely has she taken a trip — and she has been to many places most of us never get to — where she does not ask about and seek out the local women. How do they live? How are they faring?