Eleanor and Abel - Hardcover

A native Texan, Annette Sanford taught high-school English before becoming a full-time writer. Her work has been published in journals, in Best American Short Stories, and her stories have been read on NPR's "Selected Shorts." She lives in Ganado, Texas.

Eleanor, 69 and a spinster, has rented out a cottage for years, but now decides she's too tired to keep it up. Abel, a 70-year-old itinerant handyman, fortuitously notices that the roof is in need of repair and offers to renovate the cottage in exchange for rent. Eleanor at first refuses, taken aback by his somewhat brash behavior, but realizing she enjoys his company, changes her mind. They begin to grow on each other despite their being set in their individual ways and fiercely independent. They argue, then reconcile. Eleanor tells him she had been so wrapped up in her sacred routine, "I might as well be one of those mummies in the British Museum." Abel acknowledges his roaming ways, but also the fact that he treasures her warmth and gentle humor. Finally, at the quietly moving conclusion to Sanford's tale, they marry, he realizing that he's been searching all his life for her, and she recognizing, in turn, that she's been biding her time, waiting for him. Deborah Donovan
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