Margaret Leigh

The woman would probably not have believed her, but there were days when Zoë didn’t believe it herself. She had recently read—in a novel review that private detectives were unconvincing, and couldn’t help feeling that the critic had a point. Not that she felt unreal, exactly; was, in fact, more aware of her physical self than she’d been in years—of

When she’d rounded the corner on to the path, he’d been making the sign of the cross, his luggage forming a Calvary at his feet. But at Zoë’s approach he’d stopped abruptly, gathered his stuff, moved on. He’d spent the night, probably, under an open sky, but couldn’t carve a private zone out of all that space. And now Zoë Boehm sat in a crowded

Then he turned and went back to Walter. He stood for a moment, and sat down. From here, he could see the last thing his father had looked at – the long stretch of plowed land to the east, the gently curving, flat horizon, and just the tops of the Grahams’ old windbreak – they had planted blue spruces, but only a few survived. He had seen birds, Joe

That night, she sat up by her old window after putting Rosa to bed. The western horizon was flat, flat, flat, and the merest pale string of light shone above it, like a steel rim. Above that, the gallery of stars was beginning to shape itself, deep and broad and sharp in a way that you never saw in Chicago, even out in the middle of the lake.

It’s not just Frankie going to school for himself. He’s going for all of us. The world is changing, and someone has to go out into it and be prepared for it.’ Joe snorted. ‘Son, you know that that someone is him and not you. You love the world you live in, and that’s good. He loves the world we don’t know much about, and that’s good, too. I

Only Mama, with her chickens and cream, and Frank, with his fox pelts, were actually bringing in cash, and all of that was going for three things, shoes, coal, and mortgage. With luck, Papa said, there would be an early spring and the coal would hold out.

What you did when you wanted to get away with something was not to plan, but to look for an opportunity. Frank didn’t think that bicycle was going anywhere – fifteen dollars was a lot of money with everyone out of work and half the shops in Denby and Usherton boarded over – so he waited.

In any accident one notices how almost immediately the spectators divide themselves into an inner group who try to give aid, however inefficiently, and an outer ring who tender plentiful advice.

Lois was a puzzle that was to some extent solved by Henry, because Henry was so wonderful and delightful a child that clearly it was the case that some were better than others, and you were fortunate to get a good one. Even though Mama was sad a lot of the time now, which seemed to be the way you got once you’d had a baby, she never looked at Henry