Lasting Attachments (Southwest Life and Letters) - Hardcover

A native Texan, Annette Sanford taught high school English for twenty-five years before becoming a professional writer. Her stories have been featured on National Public Radio and read in live performances in New York City and in Dallas. The recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sanford lives in Ganado, Texas.

In "Standing By," the final story of this fine collection, the narrator, a middle-aged woman whose mother is about to be fitted for dentures, notices an unusual smile on her mother's face and speculates she is "already imagining the feel of her new teeth, practicing the ways she must accommodate herself to the inevitable." It is the ways in which people accommodate thernselves to what they cannot, or will not, change that link these eleven spare, restrained stories. In "Happy Fortieth, Ed and Shirley," a married couple realize their dependence on an old photograph of an unidentified man and woman-people who, through the years, have become their alter egos, allowing them to deal with issues they could not discuss directly. In "Six White Horses" an aging brother and sister must reconcile themselves to the changes a traveling salesman brings to their familiar routine. "Living" has a sweetly sad tone reminiscent of some of Willa Cather's stories as an elderly widower recalls the joy and sorrow of his unusual marriage. Sanford's characters lead seemingly uneventful lives. But beneath the surface calm is an unresolved tension, a painful awareness of what their choices have cost and of the limitations with which they live. In accommodating themselves to their limits, they achieve a quiet heroism, finding not despair, but a sense of dignity and a kind of freedom as well. Recommended. -- From Independent Publisher