The acclaimed author reflects on romance and disillusionment in childhood, young adulthood, and her marriage through a series of autobiographical essays.

"Smart, funny, and moving... A gifted and gutsy writer... This is what a first collection of stories should be." -- The Boston Globe

Cousins, mothers, sisters, dolls, dogs, best friends: these are the fixed points in Jo Ann Beard's universe, the constants that remain when the boys of her youth -- and then men who replace them -- are gone. This widely praised collection of autobiographical essays summons back, with astonishing grace and power, moments of childhood epiphany as well as the cataclysms of adult life: betrayal, divorce, death. It is a book that heralds the arrival of an immensely gifted and original writer.

"Extraordinary... Beard is writing not with the romanticism of a girl looking up at the stars, but with the brilliant cold light of the stars looking down on us." -- Chicago Tribune

"A luminous, funny, heartbreaking book of essays about life and its defining moments." -- Harper's Bazaar

"Utterly compelling... uncommonly beautiful... Life in these pages is an astonishment." -- Newsweek

"Beard remembers (or imagines) her childhood self with an uncanny lucidity that startles." -- New York Times Book Review

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• Literature & FictionEssays & CorrespondenceEssays
• Biographies & MemoirsArts & LiteratureAuthors
• Biographies & MemoirsWomen

• Publication Date: November 11, 2009
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 232 Pages
• File Size: 36 KB