The Necklace: 13 women and the experiment that transformed their lives, by Cheryl Jarvis (HC, 2008, $3)
What a strange story. A woman gets the crazy idea to buy a diamond necklace, but she can't afford the $37,000 price tag. What if, she thinks, she can get 12 other women together to buy it, in something like a timeshare. What if she can get the price down to where the 13 of them can afford it? Strange as it seems she finds the 12 women. Some of them she knows. Some she does not. They are all white, and mostly blond, but other than that they have little in common. Each will have the necklace, that they name Jewelia, for a month. Will this experiment work?
First come the conflicts. What rules do they need? Who will decide on the rules. What if someone breaks the rules? What if....
Each woman handles the situation differently. One woman wears it to work, but under her clothes so no one knows. One wears it to skydive. One wears it at a GYN exam. They start sharing it, with daughters getting married, and with perfect strangers. If someone admires it, they get to wear it for 15 minutes, usually with a photo being taken.
Weird stuff starts to happen. The women bond. Their lives change. Their priorities change. You would think that having diamonds would make them more materialistic. Instead they start donating their things, start spending more time with their families, and start raising money for causes they believe in. All because of a necklace.
Look for this on the new non-fiction table, avail. 3/28. (L:gnf)
