Publisher's Synopsis
"The yearning characters in Julia MacDonnell's burnished first collection, The Topography of Hidden Stories, grapple with doubt and disquiet in their search for love and connection, for their own place in the world. Written over the many years, between the publication of her two novels, (A Year of Favor; Mimi Malloy, At Last!) these stories create a shining tapestry of women's lives in the late 20th and the early 21st centuries. In seemingly familiar yet unpredictable ways, these characters obsess over moral yearnings, crazy loves, flimsy hatreds and the longing for a stable sense of self. Several feature women trapped in a pious patriarchy that has yet to loosen its control of women's lives, especially their creative power and fertility: An overwhelmed mother abandoning her family. A single mother trying but failing to teach her young son a lesson about the horrors of war. An artist struggling to make art against the scorn and ridicule
