by Kate Walbert
First published 1998
Marion Clark stands in another empty house, surveying another kitchen window as she prepares to pack their belongings once more. As a company wife, she trails her husband from country to country, moving through what feels like identical houses with identical garages and identical views. Marion watches her dreams slip away with each relocation, her yellow nightgown becoming a symbol of domesticity that confines her. Years later, her daughter Rebecca inherits this restless legacy but carries it differently. Rebecca travels by choice, wandering through Italy and Jamaica, Istanbul and Paris, seeking something her mother never found. She visits the Sistine Chapel and Topkapi Palace, drawn to Michelangelo's art and Mohammed's faithful followers. Yet Rebecca struggles to fulfill Marion's abandoned aspirations, unsure where to direct her prayers or whom to address. She hears voices that offer confusion rather than clarity, echoing her mother's unfulfilled wishes. While Marion lived without free will, Rebecca possesses too much freedom. Both women remain trapped in longing, separated by generation but united in their search for belonging in a world that keeps shifting beneath their feet.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, generational-trauma
Setting: Italy, Jamaica, Istanbul, Paris
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
192 pages · Hardcover · Sarabande Books