DISTANT CONSTELLATIONS

About the Book

"Distant Constellations is a delight. Adrienne Wolfert is really good."-David McCullough, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

"Don't let the sassy, slangy tone fool you. Her stories are deeply compassionate, poignant and courageous. Wolfert discovers and uncovers ageless truths for readers in her fine writing " -Geraldine Little, poet and critic

"Adrienne Wolfert is a writer of stature and excellence She belongs in the forefront of writers today. Her view, her voice, her strength dispense with sentimentality and romanticism. She is entirely original with something to say and a new way of saying it."-Louis Untermeyer, poet, anthologist, critic

Integrated by poverty, the Cavity is a neighborhood where convenience shopping means a bank flanked by a gun store on one side and a liquor store on the other, where the Muggers (Trojans) live with their "ole ladies" on the first floor of a tenement, the once-guilded La Chambord. The Amazons, five beautiful but large sisters who live upstairs, watch them roar out on their motorcycles every morning to conduct their "business" and challenge the Miseries (Greeks) who camp out in Eighty Acres Park. Mayhem begins when Paris installs his beautiful hostage, Helen of Troy, in the old barbershop. Outrageous events burst forth to a startled audience. Customers and butchers race from Mr. Figlio's meat market, reel out of the tavern, and stumble from the alleys. Crooks come by for pointers. Seniors hobble and roll down the hill from the Senior Citizens Housing Project to enjoy the entertainment before the police roar in and blast away. The Celestial Coffin Company opens for business. Parts of Distant Constellations have been previously published in North American Review and the Country and Abroad.

About the Author

Adrienne Wolfert wrote Distant Constellations while she represented the Virginia Center of Creative Arts in an exchange program with the Peredelkino Writer?s Colony, Russia. Insulated by a non-working phone and a language barrier, this editor, novelist and poet could view modern society as a collection of myths we invent to tell our truths. Wolfert has won many literary prizes, and recently published the novel Making Tracks. She received her BA from Barnard College and her MFA from Vermont College.