THOREAU'S LAUNDRY - Hardcover

Ann Harleman is the author of Happiness, a story collection that won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and the novel Bitter Lake (SMU, 1996). She’s been the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, three Rhode Island State Arts Council fellowships, the Berlin Prize in Literature, the PEN Syndicate Fiction Award, an O. Henry Award, and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. In an earlier life, she was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in linguistics from Princeton, and she lived and worked behind the Iron Curtain. Now she is on the faculties of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, where she teaches fiction writing to visual artists. Visit her Web site at www.annharleman.com

Emotionally wounded characters face off against the crueler effects of life and love in this illuminating collection of stories by the author of Happiness (1994), winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. The vivid title tale follows a "maxillofacial prosthetist" who battles increasing weariness while caring for a husband painfully succumbing to multiple sclerosis. In "Will Build to Suit," a widow, Katherine, takes her husband's place on a fellowship in Italy in an attempt to push beyond her grief. In "Iggy Ugly," a conflicted father embarks upon a unique journey with his six-year-old daughter, a precocious child afflicted with a hereditary disease. Spanning the year 1911 through the present, Harleman's stories set passionate struggles--infirmity, adultery, loss, crumbling relationships--against such volatile times as the cold war and 9/11. The 12 stories are diverse yet are bound to one another through a deeply moving sincerity and unblinking honesty. Harleman's rich prose and careful craft enhance the stories' narrative arcs, especially when her characters catch a glimpse of the hope for which they search. Leah Strauss
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