Dancing in the Flames

<p> This book examines Lee Smith's novel-length fiction and its powerful reflection of her personal search for and journey toward spiritual reconciliation. The protagonists of Smith's novels feel estranged from any sense of feminine sacredness as they struggle for a belief system that offers them hope and validation.</p><p> Chapters describe how Smith has retrieved in her fiction a source of transformative power--the power of the sexual maternal feminine divine--in hopes of creating a new image of the total sacred female whose sexuality creativity spirituality and maternity can reside comfortably in the bodies of everyday heroines.</p>