Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother - Hardcover

Peggy Orenstein is the author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap, and Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World. A Contributing Writer to the New York Times Magazine, her work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Elle, Vogue, Discover, MORE, Mother Jones, Salon, and The New Yorker. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Steven Okazaki, and their daughter, Daisy Tomoko.

“Intimate, funny/sad and remarkably self-revealing.” ―Kirkus

“...a raw, funny and poignant memoir....she writes keenly and with humor about the difficult road her quest takes. By the time I reached the end of the book, I was crying into my latte. Orenstein's memoir is not just hers; it is the story of a generation of women who dared to wait for motherhood, took risks to achieve it and were brave enough to question their decisions every step of the way.” ―Ann Hood, MORE

“A gripping memoir of one woman's quest for a baby...honest, fascinating, and wholly enlightening.” ―Cathi Hanauer, author of Sweet Ruin and editor of The Bitch in the House

“Moving and bittersweet, Waiting for Daisy is as funny, thoughtful, biting, reflective, as filled with fruitful self-doubt and cautious exuberance, as its author.” ―Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“An absolutely wonderful book. I couldn't put it down: it reads as easily and yet with as much texture as a novel. As always, Orenstein is both so smart and so human as she tells her story--and ours, too--about her marriage, career, indecision, breast cancer, and whether or not she can, and wants to, and ought to, get pregnant. Sometimes the writing is wrenching, sometimes very funny, but always profoundly honest and engaging.” ―Anne Lamott, author of Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith and Operating Instructions: A Journal of my Son's First Year

“Add to the best literature of motherhood Peggy Orenstein's searing account of her six-year quest to have a child. The story of what she put her body through is beautifully and movingly rendered, but it's her honesty in examining her own mind and heart that make Waiting for Daisy such a courageous and unforgettable book. I was enthralled.” ―Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier

“Waiting for Daisy is riveting ... It's no small feat to write a page turner that gives away the ending on the dust jacket, but Waiting for Daisy is more than just the Perils of Peggy. Orenstein has written a memoir, a confession, a polemic and a love story all at once, describing the most frantic and confusing period of her life with clarity and candor.” ―Janice P. Nimura, Los Angeles Times

“This may be the most honest book written about the tsunami of emotion that hits women when what should come most naturally -- reproduction -- becomes instead one vast, expensive science experiment.... Daisy is a fine meditation on what it means to live a fulfilled life.” ―4 Stars, "Critics Choice" People

“The Rocky of infertility memoirs.” ―New York Magazine

“Must-read for moms: The story of author Peggy Orenstein's struggle with infertility is riveting, but what really makes her new memoir, Waiting for Daisy, such a compelling read is her refreshing honesty about the complicated emotions many women face on the path to motherhood.” ―Parenting

“Orenstein's nakedly honest account of her decision at age 35 to have a baby and her ensuing struggle to do so reads like a detective thriller.” ―Elle, Winner "The Elle's Lettres" Readers' Prize, February 2007

“What sets this book apart is the way Orenstein uses her reporting skills. When she visits an ex-boyfriend who's now an Orthodox Jew, she provides a detailed portrait of his life with his wife and their 15 children. When she travels to Japan we get an investigation into the way that culture ritualizes miscarriage. Best of all, she brings her erudition and intelligence to bear on her own experience.” ―San Francisco

“Orenstein renders her experience in beautiful prose.” ―Entertainment Weekly

“[Orenstein] treats her efforts to become a mother with intelligent skepticism and a brazen sense of humor (a quality not often found in Repro Lit)....Unlike many women who have written about the experience of trying and failing to have a baby, Orenstein doesn't leave her feminism at the door. She writes frankly about her initial reluctance to become a mother and traces the complicated evolution of her feelings from "no! never!" to single-minded passion.Once launched on the all-consuming path, she makes stops that will be familiar to many of her readers...But her voice makes all the difference in the world. Far from the anguished, often reverential, super-serious tone of Internet discussion groups....One of the best things about this book is that when she succeeds in her quest, Orenstein refuses to take refuge in the smug pieties so prevalent in fertility discussions. When a friend tells her that everything happens for a reason, Orenstein bristles (bless her!)....As Daisy moves on through life, and her mother and father move with her through the parenting maze, it would be interesting to hear Orenstein's intelligent, skeptical voice ruminate on the next stages. For if any writer has the verve and tenacity to supersede the typecasting of Mommy Lit, it's Orenstein.” ―Washington Post

“If you have thrown your dreams of parenthood into the chill of the laboratory, this book will bring every memory to the surface. If you are thinking about supplementing old-fashioned procreation with science, this book is a good field-guide to what lies ahead. And if you are a woman in your 30s, this book should ring like a warning bell in the night --- at 37, you move into the "elderly gravid" cohort, and the chances that you'll become a mother start to drop dramatically.” ―headbutler.com

“Her painfully candid and moving memoir deftly wipes the Vaseline coating off the lens of modern motherhood and exposes it for the messy business it is.” ―Minneapolis StarTribune

“[A] funny, honest new book....Fertility issues have become Topic A; even the Dixie Chicks have a song about it. Orenstein's chronicle of her baby obsession is both quirkily her own and in tune with the moment.” ―San Francisco Chronicle

“Peggy Orenstein's journey [is] suspenseful [and]...unsparing....the book describes Orenstein's rapid descent into the surreal community of the subfertile....It's to Orenstein's considerable credit that even when she's naked from the waist down, she never really takes her reporter's hat off, applying the same measured scrutiny to a -junior-high-school boyfriend with a brood of 15 or the plight of women left barren and disfigured by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima as she does to her own ultimately happily resolved situation....Orenstein's interrogation of her own profiteering pregnancy retinue comes across as a welcome, even necessary exposé.” ―Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times Book Review