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The Open Door
Elizabeth Maguire
#UC0632
Hardcover, 248 pages, 2008
$19.16
There is a kind of woman who insists on loving a man who lacks all the qualities universally considered agreeable in a gentleman. Among my sex, I am that kind of woman.
Passionate, intelligent, and fearlessly independent, Constance Fenimore Woolson—grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper—was a widely read nineteenth-century novelist and short-story writer. After her mother (whom she took care of for many years) passed away, the unmarried, forty-year-old Woolson sailed for Europe with two goals: to start a new life, and to meet Henry James, whom she admired above all writers. The Open Door, an engaging work of historical fiction from Elizabeth Maguire, vividly imagines Woolson's European ventures (she never returned to America), and her relationship with Henry James (which, in fact, is shrouded in mystery). Strong and radiant, and full of surprises (the excerpt above, for example, is inspired by a man other than Henry James), Woolson makes an inspiring heroine in this intellectually and emotionally stimulating novel.
(CH)
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