A Dangerous Age - Paperback

by Ellen Gilchrist (Author)

The winner of the National Book Award returns with a moving story of a family of women drawn together by the trials of the times.

The women in the Hand family are no strangers to either controversy or sadness. Those traits seem, in fact, to be a part of their family's heritage, one that stretches back through several generations and many wars. A Dangerous Age is a celebration of the strength of these women and of the bonds of blood and shared loss that hold them together. Louise, Winifred, and Olivia are reconnecting the pieces of their lives and rediscovering love, but each is unwittingly on a collision course with a seemingly distant war that is really never more than a breath away. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, this finely honed novel about the centuries-old struggle for women who are left to carry on with life when their men go off to war is by a writer the Washington Post says "should be declared a national cultural treasure."

Front Jacket

The winner of the National Book Award returns with a moving story of a family of women drawn together by the trials of the times.

The women in the Hand family are no strangers to either controversy or sadness. Those traits seem, in fact, to be a part of their family's heritage, one that stretches back through several generations and many wars. A Dangerous Age is a celebration of the strength of these women and of the bonds of blood and shared loss that hold them together. Louise, Winifred, and Olivia are reconnecting the pieces of their lives and rediscovering love, but each is unwittingly on a collision course with a seemingly distant war that is really never more than a breath away. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, this finely honed novel about the centuries-old struggle for women who are left to carry on with life when their men go off to war is by a writer the Washington Post says "should be declared a national cultural treasure."

"Gilchrist rides the tension--between seeing events and motivations clearly and becoming clouded by personal and material concerns--on a perfect edge . . . [She] raises a multitude of issues in her novel . . . but the overriding questions here are about this war . . . about our motivations, our best interests, our moral and spiritual obligations." --The Boston Globe

"Ellen Gilchrist has helped define Southern writing . . . [She] has shown herself especially skilled at capturing the texture of women's lives, and this novel is no different . . . A Dangerous Age brings into stark relief some of the difficulties facing the United States, and does it with Gilchrist's effective forthrightness." --Chicago Tribune

"Gilchrist can create wonderful female characters, contemporary women who come alive on the page and linger long after the book is over." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"The writing is polished; all her details matter." --The Seattle Times

"[Gilchrist] gives this novel a humanity easily embraced by the reader. [Her] trademark supple prose and droll sense of humor are on full display." --Booklist, starred review

Author Biography

Ellen Gilchrist, winner of the National Book Award for Victory Over Japan, is the author of more than twenty books, including novels, short stories, poetry, and a memoir. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.