"It never
entered my mind that anyone in my husband's family would die," muses
Harriet Stedman at the
beginning of this wise and tender first novel-in-stories. On the day of the family patriarch's funeral, the
hairline cracks in her
marriage and life deepen as the hope for family unity
recedes If Harriet is anything, she is a truth-seeker, a compassionate woman who walks that uneasy line between love of her family and respect for her own vitality and desires. Imbued with unflinching honesty, and achingly human characters whose joys and sorrows are as real as our own, WOMAN MADE OF SAND is the exquisitely rendered story of Harriet, her husband Phillip, and their two children, whose lives flirt with dissolution but then rise through pain to a new wholeness.
This collection of stories spans several decades: from a summer in 1950 at the Jersey Shore in which the conflicts of an extended family are powerfully portrayed, to the present when it seems that the fate of three generations hang precariously on the outcome of a single ballet performance. On all fronts Joann Kobin is a master of subtlety and manages to find great poignancy and power in the finely observed moments when family members connect or fail to connect. Her fictions embrace and augment one another, at dance recitals, on the streets of Florence, the beaches of Cape Cod, at a college conference. The Stedmans drift apart and then come together, sometimes with grace, more often with uncertainty, determined to survive the heartaches of love..
Price: $4.99
[Notify me when price goes down.]
