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'Delicate -- Stories of Light and Desire'
April 12, 2001 --
Delicate - Stories of Light and Desire by Morning Edition commentator Mary Sojourner is a collection of tales from a woman who began writing professionally when she was 45. Now, at 61, Sojourner tells some of what she's learned, from a group of people -- middle aged, living alone after too many failed relationships, working to make connections, often succeeding, often not.
She also writes about what Vietnam has done to the men in her characters' lives -- they tell old war stories in bed in the dark. And Sojourner introduces readers to older women who still have sex on their minds. Women who are, in her words, "discovering that our faces and bodies, in men's eyes, no longer exist."
The first story in the book Delicate is Bear House, about a friendship between women who turn to one another for sustenance when bad news hits.
In The Most Amazing Thing, Sojourner writes of a teenage boy, dealing with the death of his favorite among his mothers' ex-lovers.
Estrellas Ranchos: Where the Real West Begins is the story of an 88-year-old mother who must sell a cherished acre of high desert near the Grand Canyon. She and her daughter make a last pilgrimage to the place -- "I'll miss light," my mom says. "We've got so many kinds out here." "Stop talking about death," I say. "I'm not. I'm talking about light."
Mary Sojourner is a prize-winning short story and essay writer. She is also the author of the novel Sisters of the Dream, about an East Coast woman who moves to Arizona and begins to dream the life of an ancient Pueblo woman. She teaches writing in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she lives in a two-room cabin with no running water, a wood stove, a fax machine and a passel of cats.
Listen to the Morning Edition report as NPR's Susan Stamberg talks with Mary Sojourner.
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