"The Summer Experiment"

Cathie Pelletier's novels include The Funeral Makers (a NYTBR Notable Book), The Weight of Winter (winner of the New England Book Award) and Running the Bulls (winner of the Paterson Prize for Fiction).

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Summer Experiment, her first middle grade novel, and reported the following:

Roberta McKinnon, age 11, is a science nerd and big dreamer. She likes to add to this resume, "And guess what? I'm blonde!" She and her best friend, Marilee Evans, are trying to figure out how to beat the impossibly brilliant Henry Horton Harris Helmsby---the 4 Hs of the Apocalpyse---at the upcoming science fair. Allagash, Maine, their little hometown, is famous for something called "The Allagash Abductions," when four men from Vermont claimed to have been taken aboard a spaceship while on a trip down the Allagash River. Robbie McKinnon puts her brain to good work and comes up with a solution. "If aliens visited here before, they might again. What if we try to contact them, interview them, and win science fair in the process?" But standing in the way is her annoying big brother Johnny, and his best friend, Billy, on whom Robbie has her first crush. After a mean trick played on the girls (it all had to do with fake aliens appearing at Frog Pond) Robbie decides revenge is in the air. Page 69 begins a chapter following Robbie and Marilee doing a rehearsal of the plan, just so they are prepared. It'll serve Johnny and Billy right. But this means they have to drive their 4-wheelers up on Peterson's Mountain after sundown. Everyone knows the mountain is haunted by the ghost of Cally Peterson. It's while up on the mountain that two important things happen. First, Marilee confesses how hurt she is over her parents getting divorced. And then the girls see the strange lights in the sky that all the town have been spotting. "This time it isn't your crazy brother," says Marilee. Page 69 opens the next morning following all that excitement. A summer rainstorm is bearing down on the little town and Robbie wakes up thinking of those weird lights, and how perfect "Roberta's Revenge" will be once she sets the wheels in motion.

Visit Cathie Pelletier's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The One Thing"

Marci Lyn Curtis writes teen stories about characters who set up camp in her head and refuse to leave.

Generally they are sarcastic.

Curtis applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The One Thing, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I nodded woodenly, and, eyes closed, tried to pull myself together. Beside me Mason was still as stone, but I’d swear I could feel his breath feathering against my cheek. I’d swear that he was facing me, that his eyes were on me. Was he staring at me?

I dipped my head, letting my hair curtain my face for a few seconds. Then I raised my chin. I still felt his eyes on me—scorching like the desert sun. I twisted my hands in my lap. Why was he staring?

Trying to take my mind off Mason, I peered across the nothingness to where Ben was getting ready for his race. He now sat on a wooden bench alongside the pool, so stuffed full of smiles that they just spilled out of him. He pulled on a pair of red swim goggles that warped his face a little, like those mirrors that distort your chin and make your head look fat in all the wrong places. Pumping one fist high in the air, he cheered for someone in the pool. There was something about the upward curve of his mouth that filled me with an overwhelming, protective affection. Some people have so many layers to them that you can hardly see who they are. But when I looked at Ben, I saw everything that made him him.

Why would anyone intentionally hurt someone like him?

When they announced the next race, Ben approached the water. There was a long pause while he climbed the podium. He moved slowly and deliberately, as though savoring the moment. When he finally made it to the top of the podium, he stood there for a long fragment of time. Supporting himself with the metal rails of the podium and peeling off his crutches, he scanned the crowd until he found us. And then he smiled.

Page 69 is a great representation of the struggle that takes place throughout the story. It shows the love-hate tension between Maggie (the protagonist) and Mason, the blossoming admiration Maggie has for ten-year-old Ben, and Maggie’s multitude of insecurities.

Visit Marci Lyn Curtis's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dark Shimmer"

Donna Jo Napoli is a professor in the linguistics department at Swarthmore College and the author of Crazy Jack, The Magic Circle, Stones in Water, and many other books.

Napoli applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Dark Shimmer, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Chapter Ten: Serenissima

The gondola slips through the water, and I’m listening to Bianca talk of Aunt Agnola’s dog Ribolin when the bell sounds. It’s distant but deep as it echoes across the lagoon. Bianca goes silent. We hold hands and peer ahead through the fading light.

“Venezia,” says Marin in a hushed voice as we round an island. “This view never fails to steal my breath. She deserves her name as serenissima – the most serene.”

The city looms in silence now, set against a pure blue, cloudless sky. Early moonlight shimmers off the water and the walls, white and pink and amber. It feels like a promise – like magic. Serenity pervades.

But as we approach and forms become distinct, that sense of calm evaporates. There are so many buildings, so close together, so many towers, that my skin goes gooseflesh at the thought of the vast numbers of people those buildings harbor. By day, this city must swarm like an anthill or a beehive. Narrow alleys run between buildings. I imagine them crowded, bustling. I grip Bianca’s hand tighter.

Dolce is a freak. Gigantic, unloved by anyone other than her mother, and perhaps Tommaso, yes, that boy might be infatuated with her, but childish attachments don’t interest her. She doesn’t believe anyone will ever want her as a wife, as the mother of his children. So when Mamma dies, she plunges into the water and swims away. Her island home, so small and sparsely populated, has always been a kind of prison, so in a way, this is freedom. Maybe death… but death is a kind of freedom, isn’t it? She swims till she can no more, and manages to haul her body onto a deserted island.

Her stark solitude is interrupted the next morning by the sight of a child running on the beach. A gigantic child, as large as Dolce had been at her age, another freak, but a happy one – ridiculously happy. The island has more people… the father of the girl child, Bianca, plus a group of Franciscan brothers… and all of them are gigantic. Even more astonishing, Bianca latches on to her with the ferocious tenacity of a child in need of mothering. And Dolce herself looks at Marin, Bianca’s father, with a heartbeat that nearly shakes her apart. It’s all there already, right from the start, a recipe for pain and passion; Dolce is stirred in without even a chance to yelp.

Dolce and Bianca and Marin go in a boat to a larger island, where everyone everywhere Dolce looks, every last one, is gigantic. The world turns upside-down in an instant: Dolce is ordinary in this new world, and the world she’s left behind is now the freak world.

But more revelation lies ahead, for Marin and Bianca live in Venezia. That’s where they are taking Dolce next. The city Dolce was taught as a child to fear more than anything, the city of monsters. And all she can do is go along for the ride, as though every moment is predetermined, as though birth itself formed her destiny.

Visit Donna Jo Napoli's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Secrets of Attraction"

Robin Constantine is a born and bred Jersey girl who moved down South so she could wear flip-flops year round. She spends her days dreaming up stories where love conquers all, well, eventually but not without a lot of peril, angst and the occasional kissing scene.

Her YA debut, The Promise of Amazing, was released on December 31, 2013. Her new novel, set in the same world as The Promise of Amazing, is The Secrets of Attraction.

Constantine applied the Page 69 Test to The Secrets of Attraction and reported the following:

To set the scene: Front man Jesse is not entirely sure he wants to find a new drummer, but at the insistence of his band mate Tanner they run auditions. Jesse’s not happy with the people they’ve been seeing and it shows in his attitude. They’ve about had it, when in walks Grayson.

From page 69:

The classroom door creaked open.

“Just give it a chance, okay?” Tanner whispered.

A tall dude wearing a T-shirt with Animal the Muppet and the word BEAST below the picture strolled over to us with his drumsticks in his hand. Whether he was trying to be ironic or just a douchebag was anyone’s guess. He may as well have been wearing a tee with the word Drummer across it. Poser. I had the urge to yell, “Next!” just for the hell of it. I slid my Ray-Bans over my eyes.

“Hey, this is the audition for Yellow Number Five?”

“Yeah, drum kit’s over there,” Tanner said.

Animal dude’s brows bunched together.

“I’m just…I thought – It’s just me?”

“Yes,” I said, resuming dick mode.

“Your flyer said to pick a song from either--”

I held up my hand. “Don’t tell us. Just play.”

His face was blank a moment, but then he stood up straight, shoulders back, corner of his mouth curling up. “Cool.”

After a moment of adjusting the drum kit to fit his height, he stretched his wrists, bending one back, then the other. Tanner looked over his shoulder at me and crossed his eyes. Animal dude dropped one of his sticks, and picked it up with a laugh. I braced myself for some overplaying. Closed my eyes.

Confession: I hate tests but was really intrigued by the idea of putting The Secrets of Attraction through the Page 69 Test. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Page 69 is a pivotal moment in the book that informs the rest of the novel. This is the point where the members of Yellow #5 audition to find a new drummer. That drummer turns out to be Grayson Barrett, who is instrumental in pulling all of the elements of the novel together.

Visit Robin Constantine's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Promise of Amazing.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Devil's Share"

Wallace Stroby is the author of seven novels, including the recently released The Devil's Share, the fourth in his series about professional thief Crissa Stone. He lives in New Jersey.

Stroby applied the Page 69 Test to The Devil's Share and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Devil's Share is a little bit of a character digression almost unrelated to the plot, which I don’t generally do, but it seemed fitting here. Crissa Stone, the professional thief and career criminal from three of my previous novels, is staying in a motel in the Nevada desert, where she’s casing a lonely stretch of highway as a likely site to hijack a truck carrying priceless Iraqi artifacts. She’s thinking over the possibilities while waiting for Hicks, one of her team, to arrive, and in the meantime is having a meal alone in the motel’s attached restaurant. There she’s approached by an older man who wants to buy her a drink, which she politely refuses. He won’t take no for an answer and eventually tries to sit down next to her, uninvited.

“Well, allow me to introduce myself at least,” he said. “My name is –” He started to draw out a chair. She hooked a foot around one of its legs, stopped him.

“Drift,” she said.

He met her eyes, saw something there he wasn’t used to. He straightened, looked down at her, his smile gone. He gave a slight bow, turned away, said “Dyke” under his breath, and went back down the hallway and through the saloon doors. She watched him go, wondering if he was staying at the motel, if he might be a problem later.

Part of that exchange is an homage to classic 1940s femme fatale Audrey Totter and a scene from one of her best films, 1949’s Tension. Totter died in December 2013 at age 95, while I was writing the novel, so I wanted to include a little tribute to her, from one tough fictional dame to another. The clip wasn’t on YouTube, so I uploaded it myself. You can find it as “Audrey Totter in Tension (1949).”

Learn more about the author and his novels at the official Wallace Stroby website and The Heartbreak Blog.

The Page 69 Test: Gone 'til November.

The Page 69 Test: Cold Shot to the Heart.

The Page 69 Test: Kings of Midnight.

Writers Read: Wallace Stroby.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Gilded Hour"

Rosina Lippi is a former academic and tenured university professor. Since 2000 she spends her time haunting the intersection where history and storytelling meet where she wallows in 19th century newspapers, magazines, street maps, and academic historical research. And she never gets bored with any of it.

Under the pen name Sara Donati she is the author of the Wilderness series, six historical novels that follow the fortunes of the Bonner family in the vast forests in upstate New York, from about 1792-1825. Her newest novel about the Bonner family is The Gilded Hour. The new series jumps ahead past the destruction of the Civil War to follow Nathaniel and Elizabeth’s granddaughters into the twentieth century.

Donati applied the Page 69 Test to The Gilded Hour and reported the following:

From page 69:

"You're shivering," Anna said, and handed Sophie a set of fur lined gloves from her Gladstone bag. Sophie had never acclimated to New York weather but still regularly overestimated her tolerance for cold. Anna, who knew her better than anyone, had packed extra gloves, a scarf and even a pair of the heavy wool socks Mrs. Lee knitted for each of them every winter. Sophie was a little embarrassed, but not so vain as to pretend she didn't need the things Anna handed her.

I like this paragraph because it captures something important about the relationship between the two main characters. Anna and Sophie Savard are distant cousins, both orphaned at a young age by the Civil War, who grew up together in their aunt Quinlan's household in Manhattan and shared everything from childhood joys to medical school. In this scene they are waiting for a hearing to start in the building called the Tombs -- the very apt nickname for the main courthouse. They are both anxious for good reason, but they handle anxiety about professional issues in very different ways: Anna focuses on caring for the people around her, turning outward, while Sophie turns inward to confront the problem. When the issue is a personal, emotional one, Anna turns inward, and Sophie outward.

One of the major themes of this novel, something that I had to really work to capture, was the way children who suffer terrible loss learn to cope -- or don't. The novel takes place not twenty years after the end of the Civil War, which was devastating in ways we can't really comprehend in the 21st century western world. Anna and Sophie survived and found their footing, in large part because they had each other.

Visit Sara Donati's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"In the Language of Miracles"

Rajia Hassib was born and raised in Egypt and moved to the United States when she was twenty-three. She holds an MA in creative writing from Marshall University and her short fiction has appeared in Upstreet, Steam Ticket, and Border Crossing magazines. She lives in West Virginia with her husband and two children.

Hassib applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, In the Language of Miracles, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“They’re my initials. Ka is also the ancient Egyptian name for the soul. My parents are from Egypt, originally.” He glanced sideways to see her reaction. His eyes met hers, and she smiled.

“Cool,” she said.

They walked across the park and waited for the traffic light to turn red before crossing, heading east on Fourth Street among a flow of pedestrians. He had not truly answered her question, yet she did not press on—and because she did not, he added, “The K is for Khaled.”

“Khaled. That’s nice. I don’t think I’ve met a Khaled before.”

He looked straight at her, scrutinizing her smile, her half-curious, half-friendly gaze. No judgment, none of the caution the mention of his name might have evoked. He would not tell her his last name, even though he knew the absurdity of fearing that she, living in New York, would recognize his brother’s name in his. But he had told her his first name, and that was all that mattered. That was enough.

In the Language of Miracles is told from the points of view of three different characters, so I was happily surprised to see that page 69 happened to fall on a chapter told by Khaled, the 17-year old central narrator. One of the many struggles Khaled faces throughout the novel deals with identity: how to come to terms with his Egyptian heritage while staying true to his American self; how to find acceptance as a Muslim in a society that has become increasingly hostile to Muslims in general and, due to a crime his brother has committed, to his family in particular.

On page 69, those questions are addressed directly. This scene depicts the first meeting between Khaled and a girl he has had a crush on for some time and who, because they had met online, only knows him by his initials. When she finally asks what his initials stand for, Khaled debates whether or not he should make up a new, less foreign-sounding name for himself, fearing that the sound of his decidedly Arabic name would scare her away. Eventually, he chooses to stick to the truth, revealing his true name despite having planned to do otherwise. I find this particular exchange quite endearing: Khaled is terrified of alienating her, and his paranoia about being recognized and immediately ostracized is painfully apparent. The exchange also marks the first time Khaled finds acceptance separate from his family’s troubling history and yet without having to sacrifice his Egyptian heritage, and that, I think, makes page 69 a particularly interesting point in the novel.

Visit Rajia Hassib's website.

Writers Read: Rajia Hassib.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Idyll Threats"

Stephanie Gayle’s fascination with crime stories began when she first met a policeman at the age of 4 and outsmarted him. After flirting with the idea of becoming a defense attorney and then suffering through a few years as a paralegal, she decided writing crime fiction would be a lot more satisfying -- and fun. Gayle’s first novel, My Summer of Southern Discomfort, released in 2008 (William Morrow). By day, she's a financial assistant at MIT’s Media Lab.

Gayle applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Idyll Threats, and reported the following:

Page 69 is a little different from the rest of Idyll Threats. It includes the following scene:

I’d call later to explain I couldn’t make it home. I wouldn’t mention what had happened the last time I showed up for a last-minute dinner invitation.

The table setting should’ve tipped me off. My family didn’t use the china except for holidays and dinners with deans. My brother, John, and his wife, Marie, exchanged furtive looks over their glasses. Were they having another child? Bit late, for both of them. And should Marie be drinking wine? The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” my mother said. A minute later, she brought in a man wearing a velvet jacket with a paisley pocket square. Slender and smiling. Chris Danforth. My mother knew him through her charity work with the New York Foundation for the Arts.

This is one of the few flashbacks in the novel, and the longest. In it, the reader learns a lot more about protagonist Thomas Lynch. We see that his family not only knows he’s gay, but that his mother has tried to set him up with a date and it doesn’t go well. Thomas doesn’t like being blindsided and he doesn’t like the prospective date, Chris Danforth. Chris is a loud-and-proudly-out actor. Thomas isn’t, and he doesn’t need any “how to be gay lessons” from Chris.

In creating police chief Thomas Lynch, it was important to me that he not be a token or stereotype, and that he would have strong feeling about what it means to be gay and to be a cop. Much of the book explores this tension, as Thomas is withholding evidence in a murder investigation because it threatens to out him. But page 69 and the ensuing scene is the only place the reader sees Thomas interact with his family directly. It shows that although they love him, they don’t understand him very well. And the reader begins to understand the depth of Thomas’s loneliness.

Visit Stephanie Gayle's website.

My Book, The Movie: Idyll Threats.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The White Ghost"

James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle World War II series, historical mysteries set within the Allied High Command during the Second World War. The series began with Billy Boyle, which takes place in England and Norway in 1942.

Benn applied the Page 69 Test to The White Ghost, the tenth installment of the series, and reported the following:

The Page 69 test for The White Ghost neatly highlights one of the tricky things about making an historical character part of a fictional story. I’ve incorporated real figures from history quite often in the Billy Boyle books, but usually in brief cameo roles. In The White Ghost, Jack Kennedy is a central character—and a murder suspect to boot.

John F. Kennedy was a complex guy with a family background that can be best described as dysfunctional with a strong, corrupt, power-hungry patriarch at the helm. Jack possessed character traits that were often contradictory, as shown in this passage from page 69. Here, Billy and his Polish partner Kaz are speaking with Kennedy in a naval hospital as he’s recovering from the sinking of PT 109.

He winced as he moved to a chair and motioned for Kaz to join him. He walked gingerly on the heels of his feet, which obviously were not fully healed. He shifted a few times in his seat, getting his back as straight as he could. His back was always giving him fits, and being run over by a Jap destroyer couldn’t have helped much.

After a deep breath, Jack began asking Kaz questions about Poland and the Polish Government in Exile. What was their position regarding the Soviets? Post-war borders and the British government? It was like watching a sponge absorb water. Jack had a way of taking all the intelligence you had to offer and giving little in return except his undivided attention. It was charming and callous at the same time.

This scene gave me the opportunity to lay out two of those character traits; an allusion to his chronically bad back (and by inference his dogged determination not to let on he was in pain) along with his ability to focus totally on the person he was speaking with. Several biographers had mentioned this ability to take in everything while giving nothing back except undivided attention. This drew some people permanently into the Kennedy orbit; but it was always an orbit, with the Kennedys at the center.

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

The Page 69 Test: Evil for Evil.

The Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone.

My Book, The Movie: Death's Door.

Writers Read: James R. Benn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Little Beasts"

Matthew McGevna was born and raised in Mastic Beach, Long Island. Born of Irish descent, he attended fiction and poetry workshops in Galway, Ireland, through the University of Arkansas Writing Program. He received his MFA in creative writing from Long Island University’s Southampton College in 2002. An award-winning poet, McGevna has also published numerous short stories in various publications, including Long Island Noir, Epiphany, and Confrontation. He currently lives in Center Moriches, New York, with his wife and two sons, Jackson and Dempsey.

McGevna applied the Page 69 Test to Little Beasts, his first novel, and reported the following:

From page 69:

The thought made his lines bolder. The charcoal sticks in his hand would break and roll to the floor. David felt a kind of sadness that had no beginning and no end. He felt a pain in the back of his eyes. His chest was heavy, and he didn’t know exactly why. All the world was in order, as far as he knew…

…Despite these reassurances to himself that all was in order, there was still something deep down that scratched at his mind like a cat begging to be let in. The focus he had longed for was lost in this nagging mist of fear and sadness. He had taken his dinner out of the oven and brought it into his studio to eat. He had closed the door to keep the dog out. He had taken out the garbage, handed his mother her glasses, and told her to leave him alone for the rest of the night. All he wanted was to be left alone, and now he was. He could hear his ears ringing. He stood up, put the charcoal stick down, opened the garage door, and disappeared into the warm, wet Turnbull night.

Page 69 comes remarkably close to encapsulating the spirit and theme of Little Beasts. In this scene, 15-year-old David Westwood is stewing at his home over the fact that his girlfriend (his term for what they have together) has not called him. An aspiring artist, David plans to work on a painting, but is driven to madness wondering what Julia might be up to. David reflects on his fears and insecurities, brought on by slights both real and imagined from his classmates. Finally, he puts down his brush and heads out in the pouring rain to walk to Julia’s house.

The novel is about poverty, and how financial deprivation leads to deprivation of self worth, deprivation of opportunities, deprivation of any sense of safety and security. When David doesn’t get the reception he expects on this night (on pg. 69), it adds another level of rage and insecurity that eventually manifests itself in an awful, violent way.

When he heads out to Julia’s house, he views it as a sweeping, cinematic gesture. The reality falls much shorter than that, and what you’ll notice in Little Beasts is how often reality is misinterpreted by the characters. There’s a lot of misunderstanding in Little Beasts, and this scene really underscores that motif

Visit Matthew McGevna's website.

Writers Read: Matthew McGevna.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Purgatory Gardens"

Peter Lefcourt is a refugee from the trenches of Hollywood, where he has distinguished himself as a writer and producer of film and television.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Purgatory Gardens, and reported the following:

Page 69, in its entirety:

Chris and Edie had no doubt cruised them, interviewing them as possible additions to their swinging parties. Edie had approached Marcy one day at the pool and suggested that she show up with one of the new guys for a couple of mai tai’s and a little you-know-what. Marcy passed, explaining that she didn’t indulge publicly in you-know-what.

“You don’t what you’re missing.”

“I’m afraid I do.”


The night of the mold meeting the contestants were face to face. It was obvious to her, and probably to them, that they were in competition. Didier was cordial, jovial, diplomatic, but Sammy looked like he wanted to put his rival through a wall. Frankly, she wasn’t sure which of the two attitudes was more attractive. Primitive was, as Stanley said, primitive. But a touch of the Neanderthal wasn’t entirely unappealing. Though Marcy considered herself a feminist – what woman who supports herself isn’t? – she wasn’t above being titillated by the thought of a man throwing her over his shoulder and dragging her off into a cave. At this point of her life, however, the cave would preferably have running water and a microwave.

Sammy hadn’t wanted to vote for the mold removal until she and Didier had. Marcy wasn’t sure whether this meant that he was cheap or that he was smart. Even though she certainly didn’t need a special assessment in their monthly homeowners’ dues, she wound up voting for the mold busters in memory of Stanley, who had initiated a number of improvements to the property: the

It’s obviously difficult to take any 200 odd word fragment and evaluate it without context, but think the writing style of a writer is on every page. I don’t know about you, but I read for the author’s voice. And you should find it on page 69 of any book.

Visit Peter Lefcourt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Purgatory Gardens.

--Marshal Zeringue

"After Birth"

Elisa Albert is the author of After Birth (2015), The Book of Dahlia (2008), How This Night is Different (2006), and the editor of the anthology Freud’s Blind Spot (2010).

She applied the Page 69 Test to After Birth and reported the following:

From page 69:

She just needs us to sit with her. Process. Not so terrifically much to ask. Not so big a thing.

We’re supposed to have mothers, I say. We’re supposed to have sisters. But what if you don’t have a mother? What if you don’t have a sister?

Or a crappy mother, Mina mutters, massaging a huge, tender tit. Or a crappy sister.

The specter of two women coming together in fellowship, honesty and good humor, connecting fully and whole-heartedly: it’s a radical act, and judging from the media it continues to be an utterly shocking and improbable one. Impossible, they cry! Unlikely, at the very least. How odd: A woman wrote something or filmed something or sang something not designed to make us all feel better about ourselves and the status quo. Ferocious, they say. Lunatic, they say. Outrageous, they say. (But would you fuck her?)

It’s hard to think for oneself. We are not usually given much training in it. “Rebellion rarely survives the aversion therapy that passes for being brought up female,” Andrea Dworkin wrote. Overturning systems of oppression is the primary directive of art, and no system is more oppressive than one that demands the oppressed oppress one another.

Yes, is what I’m saying: this page seems fairly representative of After Birth, which is about what can happen to women when we refuse to bullshit about our lives, refuse to isolate ourselves, refuse to buy into systems that want us quiet, invisible, and ashamed. It’s about refusal, I guess. And about what can happen when we call out systems that want us quiet, invisible, and ashamed, even if said systems happen to be comprised of, alas, other women, and even if said other women are our “friends” or our sisters or our very own mothers. And what can happen, spoiler alert, is that we might be happier, healthier, and maybe almost whole.

Here, two women sit together, keep company, and hold the space while each grapples with her own difficulty, heartbreak, struggle. That’s it. Not so big a thing. Not so much to ask.

Learn more about the author and her work at Elisa Albert's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Book of Dahlia.

--Marshal Zeringue