Author Description

The first half of Where She Went chronicles the life of Marion Clark, a "company wife" who repeatedly packs the household and accompanies her husband around the globe with a "melancholy view before her of what seemed like endless houses with endless garages and endless kitchen windows." In the stories that follow, her adult daughter Rebecca dutifully attempts to fulfill her mother;s thwarted aspirations, "but isn't sure where to go, whom to pray to, what to say. She hears voices rising in no epiphany only confusion, repeating Marion;s wishes." From the patchwork of communication that unfolds between mother and daughter, Walbert creates a narrative that is both fractured and lyrical. The stories are linked not only by characters but also by the repetition of certain haunting and idiosyncratic images-Marion's yellow nightgown, "l'heure bleue"-that rise mysterious as talismans. Rebecca continues her family legacy of wandering, traveling farther and farther afield. But hers is a world viewed with a slightly off kilter eye, one that invokes Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, Mohammed's faithful followers at Topkapi Palace, as well as the landscapes of Italy and Jamaica, Istanbul and Paris. Ironically, if Marion had no free will, Rebecca has an excess. This mother and daughter, each uniquely of her own generation, remain locked, firmly, in longing. Where She Went is an epic for our times-an Odyssey that takes home on the road. Kate Walbert was born in New York City and raised in Delaware, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Japan. She has degrees from Northwestern University and New York University. Her fiction and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including The Paris Review, DoubleTake, Fiction, The Antioch Review, Ms., and The New York Times. Walbert also writes for the theater, and her play, Year of the Woman, has been produced at the Yale School of Drama and at Villanova University. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowme