Back Where the Light Falls: Selected Stories of Nancy Hale

Where the Light Falls: Selected Stories of Nancy Hale

Edited by Lauren Groff

“Skillfully introduced and selected by Lauren Groff, this excellent collection of 25 short stories by Hale reintroduces an overlooked master of the genre. Hale explores the borderland between inner truth and outer obligation, otherness and conformity, what remains and what is lost, what humans want to be and what is actually within their power to do. . . . Extensively published in The New Yorker and the winner of 10 O. Henry Awards, Hale’s insightful, artfully constructed stories remain irresistible—and relevant—today.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Esteemed in her lifetime but largely forgotten today, short story master Hale (1908–1988 ) gets a welcome reintroduction in this collection of 25 astute, finely wrought tales. . . . Classic examples of the art of short fiction, capturing the variety of human experience with sophisticated economy.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Video Rediscovering the Pathbreaking Fiction of Nancy Hale
July 10, 2023

Story of the Week Nancy Hale, “Those Are as Brothers”
May 6, 2020

Interviews Listen: Lauren Groff introduces the “wickedly smart” Nancy Hale
October 11, 2019

A teenage girl in Connecticut driven to near delirium over her burgeoning sexuality. A twenty-something New Yorker transplanted to a small Virginia community who boldly befriends the town pariah. A New England widow in search of alcohol and excitement while babysitting her grandson. A Maryland socialite who has built a secret bomb shelter that becomes the center of her imaginative life.

These are some of the characters who inhabit Nancy Hale’s lush fiction. Haunting, vivid, and wonderfully subversive, Hale’s stories typically concern women recognizable to all of us—sometimes fragile, possibly wicked, deceptively ordinary, navigating their way uncertainly through life. Nancy Hale was one of the most accomplished short story artists of her era, winner of ten O. Henry Awards and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1960s. But by the time of her death in 1988, this remarkable writer, so far ahead of her time in her depiction of complex women, was largely forgotten. Now Lauren Groff reintroduces this modern master with a selection of twenty-five of her best stories—brilliant short fiction that encompasses childhood and adolescence, marriage and motherhood, desire and infidelity, madness and memory.

Where the Light Falls reveals Hale as a gifted stylist—a painter in light and shadow—and an acute observer of modern American life.

Nancy Hale (1908–1988), born in Boston to a family whose forebears include Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale and Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the author of eight novels, including the best-selling The Prodigal Women, four short story collections, two memoirs, two plays, children’s stories, and a biography of Mary Cassatt. With the writer Elizabeth Coles Langhorne, she was a cofounder of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Lauren Groff is the New York Times–best-selling author of three novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Fates and Furies, and two short story collections, Delicate Edible Birds and Florida.

“Nancy Hale’s touch was so precise and delicate that you might think you’re reading undiscovered Edith Wharton stories. Seen anew in Lauren Groff’s excellent selection, these stories are very much of-the-moment. What an exhilarating book!”—Ann Beattie

This special publication features full-cloth binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
News & Views

Video Rediscovering the Pathbreaking Fiction of Nancy Hale
July 10, 2023

Story of the Week Nancy Hale, “Those Are as Brothers”
May 6, 2020

Interviews Listen: Lauren Groff introduces the “wickedly smart” Nancy Hale
October 11, 2019

Story of the Week Nancy Hale, “The Earliest Dreams”
October 4, 2019

News All Hale! A chorus of critical praise greets an overlooked master
September 24, 2019
Table of Contents

Introduction by Lauren Groff

The Earliest Dreams
The Double House
Midsummer
To the North
Crimson Autumn
That Woman
A Place to Hide In
Book Review
Those Are as Brothers
The Marching Feet
Sunday—1913
Who Lived and Died Believing
Some Day I’ll Find You . . .
On the Beach
Inside
The Empress’s Ring
The Bubble
Miss August
How Would You Like to Be Born . . .
Outside
A Slow Boat to China
Flotsam
Rich People
Sunday Lunch
The Most Elegant Drawing Room in Europe

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-642-3 372 pages

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