Winter Roads, Summer Fields: Stories
Stories reveal the lives of several families in a Midwestern farming community from the Depression to the present
Read More
Marjorie Dorner's splendidly written collection of stories, Winter Roads, Summer Fields, takes readers to a midwestern farm community filled with richly drawn families, whose lives we follow from the Depression to the present. In the opening story, set in 1935, Dorner introduces readers to Celie, whose repressed girlhood ("Somehow, without even speaking, Celie's mother made it seem that giggling and practical jokes and dressing up were bad, something to be ashamed of") leaves her unprepared for a sudden awareness of sex and childbirth. In a later story, we meet Celie again in 1990-old, alone, but vibrantly independent. And in the closing story, a very old woman's reverie about an exquisitely tender moment in her young marriage contrasts with her present dependence and confusion, allowing readers to empathize completely with the reality of an Alzheimer's patient.
Read Less