A New England Nun and Other Stories

<p> richly observed collection of late 19th-century short fiction <em>A New England Nun and Other Stories</em> explores the restrained emotional lives of women in rural New England. Each story reveals small but profound conflicts-between duty and desire silence and expression solitude and companionship-rendered in spare graceful prose. The settings are quiet but the inner dramas are strikingly resonant offering insight into the domestic and spiritual confines of the time. Themes of personal autonomy religious restraint and moral ambiguity dominate these carefully crafted portraits which together form a landmark in American literary realism.</p>