'It's the way things work, isn't it? Chance, happenstance..and choice. Things might happen accidentally...but then we make choices. That's what we have to live with; not the accident, the fluke - but the choices we make in the wake of it. Because they really determine our fate.'

Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945. The war is over, and Eric Smyth'e party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too, was his sister, Sara - an independent, canny young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked a gatecrasher, Jack Malone - U.S Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, and a man whose world-view did not tally with that of Eric and his friends.

This chance meeting between Sara and Jack - and the choices they both made in the wake of it - would eventually have profound consequences, both for themselves and for those closest to them. And the effect of their actions would reverberate within their families for decades afterwards.

Set amidst the dynamic optimism of Post-War New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy witch-hunts, The Pursuit of Happiness is a great tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices, and the random workings of destiny.

His most ambitious novel to date, bestselling author Douglas Kennedy has written an intimate epic of immense emontional power.