Throughout, war looms at the margins, as the characters struggle to stay alive and stay together in troubled times. From the seventeenth-century Irish servant Mary Carryll to a contemporary care-giver for a cancer patient, these women leave traces of themselves in diaries, letters, and stories that mark their dedication to the healthy, working body and mind as a source of human dignity. They also share an impulse to find order and beauty in the physical and emotional "home remedies" of herbs, food, and love, even when larger forces work to break the generational cycle through which mothers teach their daughters. Exploring modern-day problems ranging from strained familial relationships to an individual's struggle to find her place in the world, Kennedy's powerful collection reveals our new century's intricate connections to the past.
