The historical short stories in Emma Donoghue's new collection wander across centuries and continents, but they actually don't stray far from this Irish-born writer's preoccupation with captivity, sexual predation, prostitution, and the grip of parenting.
All fourteen stories concern some sort of wanderer; a wife fleeing the Irish famine to join her suffering husband in Toronto; a black slave and his white "Missus" bolting from the nasty, "Marse" in Civil War Texas; prospectors who strike an unexpected vein of mutual comfort in the snowbound Yukon goldfields; Chicago counterfeiters who hatch a harebrained plot to ransom Lincoln's exhumed body for a jailed colleagues release; and a lesbian couple losing each other to dementia after nearly six decades of living and making sculpture in Toronto.
Donoghue's endnotes supply information that takes us beyond the scope of her stories. They enhance the stories and satisfy our curiosity about what really happened.
Excellent read!!!!!
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