商品簡介
Paula Peterson’s memoir, Penitent, with Roses, was an unflinching account of her life as a woman and mother after being diagnosed as HIV positive. All the stories in this striking first collection of short fiction feature female heroines living with HIV infection. Shot through with humor, warmth, and insight, a collection that has already received extraordinary advance praise, Peterson’s stories succeed in bringing us into a radically new understanding of life with AIDS.
Lucinda, of “A Miracle,” is visited by a red-haired man in a pinstriped suit who turns out to be God— somewhat shy and insecure, but the only savior she’s likely to encounter. Russian émigré Olga, “The Woman in the Long Green Coat,” bewitches her doctor by inhabiting his dreams and awakening his long-dormant imagination. Cherry physically battles the ghost of her ex-boyfriend, Duane, which appears in her house every night to torment her. “The Affecteds and the Infecteds” are teenagers who live with AIDS and find adolescence complicated by their proximity to illness and death. In the penultimate story of the nine collected here, a woman watches her son visiting an AIDS memorial park to sprinkle wildflowers on her name inscribed in the stones.
作者簡介
Paula W. Peterson is the author of Penitent, with Roses: An HIV+ Mother Reflects, winner of the Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Her short fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Nimrod, Carolina Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, and other journals, and both her stories and essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Peterson lives outside of Chicago.
