Book Title: THE HEDGEROW
Character Name: Edith Sloan
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
I grew up in Urbana, Illinois, as an only child. My mother was a housewife, and my father was a professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois. Those were unhappy years for me. My father was cruel and overly strict. My mother couldn’t protect me from his rage and abuse.
What was your greatest talent?
I’d say understanding the limitations of others, particularly men. They’re usually unaware of their shortcomings, or if they are, try to compensate for them in ridiculous ways. Have you ever noticed how the most insecure man is the one who brags the most about his accomplishments? Men seem to be perpetually off-balance, between their need to impress women and also to control them.
Significant other?
Oh, there have been a small handful. My ex-husband, Walter, of course, then there’s my fiancé, Henry McCormick. I’m embarrassed to mention a Mr. Philip Green, with whom my relationship was brief and purely romantic, and a professor when I was an undergraduate. He turned out to be married, more’s the pity.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
Not losing interest. It’s so hard to be glad to see someone day after day. The worst is when you reach that point when you just know what he’s going to say, word for word. Predictability is the soul’s death.
Where do you live?
Boston, MA.
Do you have any enemies?
I’m my own worst enemy, now that my father is gone. I’m very hard on myself, and I can’t seem to reconcile all my inner conflicts.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
I only came to Boston to attend Harvard. Frankly, I was happy in Washington during the war and right afterwards. It’s an exciting place to be and I’m sure it would have gone on being a stimulating environment. The problem was, Walter didn’t want to remain with the Navy, not on active duty, that is. Reserve status, sure, that only stands to reason, given what the Koreans and the Russians – not to mention the Chinese are up to these days. So, we came here, well, to Cambridge.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
Neither, thank goodness. Well, let me amend that a bit, if I may. I’ve adopted Edgar, a cat that belonged to Miss Clara Levy, a poet whose manuscript I hope to publish next year. She went into a nursing home and could no longer care for him. Edgar lives in my bookstore (see response to your next question). I simply can’t have him in the apartment.
What do you do for a living? I own The Turned Page bookstore on Harvard Square, but it doesn’t support me. I came into a little money when my father died. He’d been squirreling it away for years and never told my mother, which doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Greatest disappointment?
Giving up my doctoral degree. Well, letting Walter convince me that I should give it up. You see, he was spotted as a rising star in his law school class, and one of the professors took him aside and suggested that he now needed a certain kind of wife. I leave you to fill in the rest, but in essence it came down to not having a wife with a PhD.
Greatest source of joy?
Poetry, books, ideas.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
These days I’m reading manuscripts for my new publishing venture, the Hedgerow Press. What’s hard about this is that there are so few good ones.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
Ever thinking that a man was the answer to my problems.
What keeps you awake at night?
Right now, I’m worried about my fiancé, Henry. He had something of a nervous breakdown and is in a sanitorium. I know he’s getting good care there, but I don’t know when he’ll snap out of it.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
I need to find a way to tell Henry I do not intend to marry him. I know it sounds harsh, but I simply can’t be his caretaker, though of course, that’s exactly what he envisions for me.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
I need respect. I’m a businesswoman and I should be seen as such, not as a divorcée on the hunt for a new husband.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and do a little time traveling, if you’ll permit this brief departure from reality. I’m writing this or telling you this in 1949. Women are kept in second place, expected to marry and have three or four children, bow down to their husband’s wishes, and generally not have a single thought for anything other than his comfort. The sexual revolution is years away. Single women cannot be prescribed a diaphragm. A married woman often needs her husband’s permission to obtain one. Safe, legal abortion is non-existent. Whatever we progress we might have made during the Second World War is long gone. Jobs are for men now, so are places in graduate school. You can imagine the looks I get when I tell people I’m a bookstore owner and now a publisher. Take this as a cautionary tale. You live in a time when there are people who wish women were controlled the way they are in my time. Think about it.
It’s 1949, the freedom granted women by the Second World War is over, and stifling social conventions are once more at play. Edith Sloan, the rebellious, well-educated heroine of An Open Door returns in The Hedgerow to pursue her dreams of owning a thriving bookstore on Harvard Square and establishing a poetry press to publish the silent and underserved. Free of her dreary marriage to Walter, she receives a proposal from Henry, a wealthy British peer and the man who made the purchase of her bookstore possible. When she accepts, is it from love or gratitude? Will being his wife help or hinder her plans? Edith soon finds herself at the intersection of free expression and censorship. Duty competes with desire, while serious endeavors are undermined by trivial pursuits. As she tries to balance the competing demands in her life, troubling facts from Henry’s past come to light. Edith also discovers that being a pioneer in publishing comes with consequences she hadn’t foreseen. The decade draws to a close and delivers one more surprise Edith must summon extraordinary courage to face.
Women's Fiction [Unsolicited Press, On Sale: July 9, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781956692990 / ]
Anne Leigh Parrish sat down one day at an ancient typewriter and banged out a short story. Nine years and many stories later, "A Painful Shade of Blue," found a home in The Virginia Quarterly Review. The story featured the real-life trauma of her parents' divorce when she was only ten years old. While other stories returned to that time and place, most ventured further afield, focusing on women in impossible situations, and blending stark reality with magical realism. In 2014 her first novel, What Is Found, What Is Lost, featuring four generations of women and their experience with religious faith convinced her that she also loved long-form writing. Women Within, her second novel, is another multi-generational story about three women whose lives intersect at the Lindell Retirement home. In both stories and subsequent novels, the Dugan family of Dunston, New York, a fictional town representing Ithaca, where Anne grew up, takes center stage. They're a tough, hard-worn bunch full of love, pain, and fierce devotion to each other - usually. Her linked story collection, Our Love Could Light The World, and her novels The Amendment and Maggie's Ruse follow them over years and many ups and downs. Her forthcoming novel, A Winter Night, due out in March 2021 centers on the eldest daughter, Angie Dugan, and her struggle to find love and self-acceptance. Anne lived in Seattle for thirty-five years until Amazon made driving anywhere a nightmare, then moved with her husband and black female pug to a forest outside of Olympia Washington where she continues to write stories, novels, the occasional essay, and most recently, poetry.
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