A Rosellen Brown Reader

by Rosellen Brown

The author of Tender Mercies and Civil Wars demonstrates her command of diverse genres in this engaging collection of poetry, short stories, and essays. Best known for her carefully crafted, emotionally resonant novels, Rosellen Brown is committed to the ideal of the well-rounded writer. She shifts easily from prose to poetry, from fiction to nonfiction, from novels to short stories with an assured mastery of each form that enriches her work in the others. This Reader is the first book to bring together her work in a variety of genres, presenting many previously uncollected stories and essays. The collection reveals the wide range of her imagination and the evolution of her central themes. "Like a pilot flying low over the land," she writes in her introduction, "I've finally been able to study what my 'central work, ' my novels, can't teach me--the general shape of my preoccupations across the years; the rises and declivities of skill, curiosity, casual engagement, and inescapable obse