The Nightingales of Troy

Alice Fulton

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9780393079500
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction

"Outstanding....Alice Fulton reveals herself to be triumphantly at home in the short story."— Boston Sunday Globe

In 1908, Mamie Garrahan faces childbirth aided by her arsenic-eating sister-in-law Kitty, a nun who grows opium poppies, and a doctor who prescribes Bayer Heroin. "In the twentieth century, I believe there are no saints left," Mamie remarks. But her daughters and granddaughter test this notion with far-reaching consequences. Kitty's arsenic reappears sixty years later in the hands of her distraught niece. A schoolgirl's passion for the Beatles and Melville—a passion both lonely and funny—shapes her life. Each decade is illuminated by endearingly eccentric characters: an anorexic waitress falls for a wealthy college boy in the jazz age...an exuberant young nurse questions science during the Depression...a homely seamstress designs a scandalous dress in the 1950s. The Nightingales of Troy, the first fiction collection by an acclaimed American poet, creates a vividly palpable sense of time and place. Alice Fulton's memorable characters confront the deepest dilemmas with bravery and abiding love.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• ALSO BY ALICE FULTON
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• HAPPY DUST
• QUEEN WINTERGREEN
• A SHADOW TABLE
• THE NIGHTINGALES OF TROY
• DOROTHY LOVES MALEMAN
• THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES
• THE REAL ELEANOR RIGBY
• CENTRALLY ISOLATED
• IF IT’S NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK
• L’AIR DU TEMPS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• About the Author