A private state
Subtitle: stories
By: Charlotte Bacon.
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Amherst
Language: eng
Number of pages: 179
Subjects: Women -- United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction.
Description: Here is a collection of stories about women who have arrived at awkward edges in their lives. Some are adolescents, some at the brink of old age, and some find themselves suddenly ill or pregnant. Others come to the abrupt discovery that their marriages are not as whole as they had believed, while a few tumble onto startling secrets. But despite their range in age and situation, they all try to use their new knowledge to stitch together a fresh pattern by which to live.

While most of the action unfolds along the East Coast - in Maryland, Maine, Boston, Philadelphia, New York - several of the women travel to Arizona, California, and Jamaica. Often the light is too bright in these glittery places and they wonder why they have come. Many seem to be searching for a sense of home, which one girl describes as a place that is "complete and full of longing all at once."
Table of contents: title: Live free or die; title: Arizona; title: Luck; title: A private state; title: Safe as houses; title: Pacific; title: Accidentals; title: Mercury; title: Monsoon; title: Open season; title: Mrs. Pritchard and Mr. Watson.