- Shopping Bag ( 0 items )
The New York Times bestselling author of The Girls from Ames shares an intimate look at a small-town bridal shop, its multigenerational female owners, and the love between parents and daughters as they prepare for their wedding day.
Thousands of women have stepped inside Becker’s Bridal, in Fowler, Michigan, to try on their dream dresses in the Magic Room, a special space with soft lighting, a circular pedestal, and mirrors that carry a bride’s image into infinity. The women bring with them their most precious expectations about romance, love, fidelity, permanence, and tradition. Each bride who passes through has a story to tell—one that carried her there, to that dress, that room, that moment.
Illuminating the poignant aspects of a woman’s journey to the altar, The Magic Room tells the stories of memorable women on the brink of commitment. Run by the same family for four generations, Becker’s has witnessed transformations in how America views the institution of marriage: some of the shop’s clientele are becoming stepmothers, some are older brides, some are pregnant. Shop owner Shelley has a special affection for all the brides, hoping their journeys will be easier than hers. Jeffrey Zaslow weaves their true stories using a reporter’s research and a father’s heart.
The lessons Zaslow shares from within the Magic Room are at times joyful, at times heartbreaking, and always with insight on marriage, family, and the lessons that parents—especially mothers—pass on to their daughters about love. Weaving together secrets, memories, and family tales, The Magic Room explores the emotional lives of women in the twenty-first century.
Jeffrey Zaslow was a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and author of the New York Times bestseller The Girls from Ames. He was coauthor with Chesley Sullenberger on Highest Duty; with Representative Gabrielle Giffords and her husband on Gabby; and with Randy Pausch on The Last Lecture, the number one bestseller.
Zaslow has returned to writing for Wall Street Journal, but his features, unlike those of his colleagues, are not centered on the world of finance. In an award-winning column called "Moving On," he chronicles the often emotionally charged human interest stories behind various life transitions -- from marriage to divorce and from career change to retirement. It was in pursuit of just such a story that he found his greatest fame.
In 2007, Zaslow learned about an unusual event to be held at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University. A computer science professor named Randy Pausch was scheduled to take part in a popular series of campus talks that invites teachers to present hypothetical "last lectures" to their students. But, what made this talk different was the total absence of hypothesis: Recently diagnosed with end-stage pancreatic cancer. Pausch was, indeed, addressing the student body for the last time. Zaslow attended the jam-packed lecture and wrote about it in his column, helping to fuel worldwide interest and an Internet phenomenon. Pausch and Zaslow collaborated on The Last Lecture, a book-length narrative that served not just as a compendium of life lessons, but as a moving testimony to Pausch's optimism and courage. The book was published in April of 2008 and became an international bestseller. Pausch died three months later.
After Pausch's death, Zaslow returned to a project he had spent many months pursuing: the biography of an extraordinary, enduring friendship among 11 women who had grown up together in the American Midwest. Revelatory, inspiring, and shot through with the optimism and emotional resonance that distinguishes all of Zaslow's writing, The Girls from Ames was published in April of 2009.
"When I was an advice columnist in Chicago, I hosted a singles party for charity every fall. We'd have 7,000 attendees a year, and 78 marriages resulted."
"I had never been to Ames, Iowa, before I began reporting The Girls From Ames."
As a journalist, and as the father of three girls, I often find myself drawn by an urge to explore the bonds between parents and daughters. In all the books I've written, this has been a powerful theme.
When I coauthored The Last Lecture with Randy Pausch, his youngest child, Chloe, was not yet two years old. I saw how desperately Randy wanted to leave her whatever wisdom he could. He wished he had 20 years to offer her advice, but he had just a few months, because he was dying of pancreatic cancer. His legacy would be the words in the book.
I later coauthored Highest Duty, the memoir of pilot "Sully" Sullenberger, who famously landed a crippled jet in New York's Hudson River. He and I spent a lot of time talking about his love for his two teen-aged daughters, and his regrets about missing so much of their lives while he was away from home, flying passengers to their destinations.
Most recently, I collaborated with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, on their memoir, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope. The congresswoman had been shot in the head in an assassination attempt, and I saw the great power in parental love. Gabby spent several weeks in a medically induced coma, and her mom kept a vigil at her bedside. "I feel like my breathing is helping Gabby breathe," her mother told me. "I just want to share the air in the room, like maybe my breath will sustain her."
I've seen equally poignant parent-daughter bonds in the relationships of the less-well-known people I've written about.
For The Girls from Ames, I profiled ten women, now in their mid-forties, who grew up together in Ames, Iowa. The book was focused on their forty-year friendship, but I was also moved by the women's relationships with their parents as they were growing up. In an early scene in the book, one of the Ames girls was about to go out of town to college, and she was crying because she feared she'd miss her parents.
"Here's what we'll do," her father told her. "We're going to keep you at the end of our fishing line. And if you ever need anything, you just give a little tug and we'll reel you back in."
Working on all of those books - observing again and again the power of parental affection - led me to my latest project. I wanted to write a nonfiction narrative reflecting on the love we all wish for our daughters. My girls are now ages 22, 20 and 16, and I know they will continue to need love in their lives - from me, my wife, each other, and someday I hope, from their husbands and children. How could I address all of the feelings that parents like me have?
I recognized that I needed a place to set this new book, a place with great emotion. I considered many possibilities. Maybe I'd visit maternity wards, dance studios, daddy-daughter date nights, or spas where mothers and daughters go to bond. But then my wife suggested I find a bridal shop. Maybe that would be a place to set my story.
"There's something about a wedding dress..." she said.
She was definitely on to something.
I was willing to go anywhere in the country to find the right store and the right stories. My search ended in the tiny, one-stoplight town of Fowler, Mich., a place with just 1,100 residents — and 2,500 wedding dresses. It has more bridal gowns per capita than anywhere in the United States.
Fowler is home to Becker's Bridal, a 77-year-old institution on Main Street. It's been run for all those years by the same family - a great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and daughter.
The store is housed in a stone structure that was once a bank, and since 1934, more than 100,000 brides have made a pilgrimage here. After they select the dress they think might be "the one," they're invited to step inside what used to be the old bank vault. A ten-foot-by-eight-foot space with mirrors designed to carry a bride's image into infinity, it's called "The Magic Room," and with good reason. Brides and their parents routinely melt into tears there, as they reflect on all the moments that led them to that dress, that room, that moment.
And so I set out to write a book about the brides and their parents who've stepped into that special space. The book is titled The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters.(www.magicroombook.com)
I focused the book on six brides and their families whose paths to Becker's Bridal were not necessarily easy, but who have given great thought to the love that guides and connects them. I felt privileged standing in the Magic Room with these families whose stories touched me the most, and while there, contemplating my feelings for my own daughters.
People often ask me what my books have in common. I've come to realize that they are all about the same thing — love. For every book I've written, I've brought a reporter's instincts, but also a father's heart. In many respects, The Magic Room is a culmination of a great many feelings swirling inside of me.
Overview
The New York Times bestselling author of The Girls from Ames shares an intimate look at a small-town bridal shop, its multigenerational female owners, and the love between parents and daughters as they prepare for their wedding day.
Thousands of women have stepped inside Becker’s Bridal, in Fowler, Michigan, to try on their dream dresses in the Magic Room, a special space with soft lighting, a circular pedestal, and mirrors that carry a bride’s image into infinity. The women bring with them their most precious expectations about romance, love, fidelity, permanence, and tradition. Each bride who passes through has...