Climbing the Ivory Tower

This book is about two women in their early fifties who decide to return to graduate school to work toward a Ph.D. in musicology. They don't know one another, they don't have any idea how taxing it will be, and they have been out of touch with recent scholarship. One of the women has five children and the other has two, but all are frisky and imaginative kids who keep up their antics to their mothers' despair. Their tales of adjustment to academic life, their interaction with the professors and classmates, and their attempt to survive confrontations with their children are sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic, to say nothing of the medical obstacle that bars their path.