Cora Fry's Pillow Book

Through the persona of Cora Fry, a wife and mother living in a small New Hampshire town, Rosellen Brown explores the ambivalent ties of love, loyalty, marriage, and family in a series of related poems. This volume includes the entire text ofCora Fry(1977), a kind of dramatic monologue, written in spare, simple lines, which describes the young woman's daily life and troubled marriage. A sequel of newer poems,Cora Fry's Pillow Book(1994), confronts the challenges that come with a woman's growth toward middle age, reflecting an older Cora's place in her family, community, and the larger world.

Rosellen Brown is the author of the novels Before and After, The Autobiography of My Mother, Tender Mercies, Civil Wars, and Half a Heart; the collection of stories Street Games; and the collections of poetry Some Deaths in the Delta, Cora Fry, and Cora Fry's Pillow Book. She lives in Chicago.

“Full of humor, truth, anger, and tenderness . . . Rosellen Brown has given us a novel stripped down to essences in this remarkable set of poems, the vivid evocations of a country woman’s life.” – May Sarton.