I, Rhoda Manning, Go Hunting with My Daddy

I, Rhoda Manning, Go Hunting With My Daddy BY ELLEN GILCHRIST

(LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, $25.95)

Fans of this author's work may recognize several characters in this new collection of short stories. First-time readers will see their relatives, their neighbors, and probably themselves.

Rhoda Manning and her family have appeared in various guises during the course of the author's 20-year writing career. In this book, the first five stories present the world as seen through the eyes of Rhoda at different stages of life. It's a world dominated, and often nearly destroyed, by her father, Big Dudley.

Whether she's a 5-year-old accompanying her father and brother on a hunting trip in southern Illinois or the mother of two rule-testing teenage boys off to visit her parents for an ill-fated Christmas in Wyoming, Rhoda struggles to understand and cope with the maelstrom that constantly swirls around her. Other characters in the collection also share Rhoda's exasperating emotional mix of love, confusion, and fear. All the characters, old and new, are painted with the poetic phrasings and descriptive dialogs that fill Ellen Gilchrist's earlier novels and collections. They are people we know, and their stories are as familiar and frightening as a family reunion. -JAMES T. BLACK

Copyright Southern Progress Corporation Aug 2002
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