From the New York Times best-selling author of COMMENCEMENT and MAINE comes a gorgeous, sprawling novel about marriage --- about those who marry in a white heat of passion, those who marry for partnership and comfort, and those who live together, love each other, and have absolutely no intention of ruining it all with a wedding.

Evelyn has been married to her husband for 40 years --- 40 years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love --- the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding --- beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings --- and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own.

As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: “A Diamond Is Forever.” And that line changes everything.

A rich, layered, exhilarating novel spanning nearly a hundred years, THE ENGAGEMENTS captures four wholly unique marriages, while tracing the story of diamonds in America, and the way --- for better or for worse --- these glittering stones have come to symbolize our deepest hopes for everlasting love.