Showing results by narrator "Amanda Cobb" in All Categories

In a long-unoccupied mansion, a new mother is confined to what was once a nursery. She is assured by her physician husband that it is a necessary cure to ease her "nervous depression." Isolated and powerless, she becomes obsessed with the peeling, sickly colored wallpaper. In it, she sees what no one else can: a prisoner desperate to escape its maddening design. A condemnation of the patriarchy, The Yellow Wallpaper explores with terrifying economy the oppression, grave misunderstanding, and willful dismissal of women in late nineteenth-century society.

What Luck, This Life begins in the aftermath of the space shuttle's break-up, as the people of Piney Woods watch their pastures swarm with searchers and reporters bluster at their doors. A shop owner defends herself against a sexual predator who is pushed to new boldness after he is disinvited to his family reunion. A closeted father facing a divorce that will leave his gifted boy adrift retrieves an astronaut's remains. An engineer who dreams of orbiting Earth joins a search for debris and instead uncovers an old neighbor's buried longing.