Big as life

by Maureen Howard

"In "Children with Matches," a woman historian discovers that the hard lessons of the past may be a route to responsibility in the present. Her journey is the personal history of a doomed princess who no longer waits for rescue, but takes her rightful place beside her lover in the world. In "The Magdalene," a tale of willful innocence and loss of faith, Howard draws on the legend of the saintly whore, of a woman's injury and her own guilt denied, but most assuredly suffered. The central figure in "Big as Life: A Story in Three Panels" is the American artist and naturalist John James Audubon, whose genius and ambition in pursuing his Great Idea, The Birds of America, devour those around him, most touchingly Lucy, his wife. The themes of imagination and endurance are further elaborated in "Salvino," a contemporary exploration of success and failure in art and science that continues the story of Artie and Louise of A Lover's Almanac. "Myself," the third section of this final tale, is a mo