In “Wild Life” Molly Gloss weaves the remarkable story of Charlotte Bridger Drummond in the early years of the 20th Century. Raising her sons along the Columbia River in a southern Washington state just emerging from frontier status, Mrs. Drummond embraces her husbandless state for the independence it gives her. She harbors resentment for her disappeared husband, and has never quite accepted his presumed death. It pleases her more to be left behind and put upon, than let herself don the weeds of...
September 09, 2011
"The Train of Small Mercies" by David Rowell
David Rowell/ family fictionOn a sweltering June day in 1968 a New York Central Railroad train traveled from New York to Washington carrying the casket containing the remains of New York’s recently assassinated senator, Bobby Kennedy. The train ran slowly and behind schedule, because of tragic accidents in New Jersey, and we learn of this in David Rowell’s remarkable and clever debut, “The Train of Small Mercies,” but this serves as backbone and binding arc to the vivid stories of a small but diverse group of ordinary Americans...
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