DeWitt Henry

Long known as an essayist and editor, and co-founder of Ploughshares literary magazine, Henry has published his first novel, winner of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel. It is the story of a working-class Philadelphia woman whose life is upset by the death of her father and her younger sister's takeover of the family home. The protagonist is forced out of the house and soon develops an unusual relationship—which becomes a marriage—with an older co-worker. She struggles to legitimize her place in her new husband's life and restore her own inner strength.