Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

Stories

Bonnie Jo Campbell

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780393248463
• Subtopic: Literature General

"Bonnie Jo Campbell is a master of rural America's postindustrial landscape." — Boston Globe

Named by the Guardian as one of our top ten writers of rural noir, Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel, and funny. The strong but flawed women of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor, and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter relationships can be lifelines, anchors, or they can sink a woman like a stone.

In "My Dog Roscoe," a new bride becomes obsessed with the notion that her dead ex-boyfriend has returned to her in the form of a mongrel. In "Blood Work, 1999," a phlebotomist's desire to give away everything to the needy awakens her own sensuality. In "Home to Die," an abused woman takes revenge on her bedridden husband. In these fearless and darkly funny tales about women and those they love, Campbell's spirited American voice is at its most powerful.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Sleepover
• Playhouse
• Tell Yourself
• The Greatest Show on Earth, 1982: What There Was
• My Dog Roscoe
• Mothers, Tell Your Daughters
• My Sister Is in Pain
• A Multitude of Sins
• To You, as a Woman
• Daughters of the Animal Kingdom
• Somewhere Warm
• My Bliss
• Blood Work, 1999
• Children of Transylvania, 1983
• Natural Disasters
• The Fruit of the Pawpaw Tree
• Acknowledgements
• Praise for Mothers, Tell Your Daughters
• Reading Group Guide
• Also by Bonnie Jo Campbell
• Copyright