by Doris Betts
First published 1973
In the tobacco fields and mill towns of North Carolina, women face choices that will reshape their lives. A young mother weighs leaving her husband for a chance at something better. A teenage girl discovers her first love carries consequences she never imagined. An elderly woman confronts memories she has spent decades trying to forget. Each story in this collection follows women at crossroads, caught between duty and desire, tradition and change. Betts places her characters in moments of quiet crisis where small decisions reveal large truths about what it means to be human. The women in these stories struggle with marriages that have grown cold, children who disappoint, and dreams that seem increasingly distant. Yet they persist, finding strength in unexpected places and grace in ordinary moments. These are stories about survival and resilience, about the weight of the past and the possibility of redemption.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, family-life, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: crossroads, duty-vs-desire, resilience
Setting: North Carolina
Period: 20th-century
192 pages · Paperback · Harper & Row