When this novel's unnamed narrator meets the elusive but exciting Richard (an envelope salesman with a nice layman's line in Zen philosophies), he offers her a friendly escape from her dreary domestic life. Burdened by her husband's ongoing negotiations with his angry ex-wife, the strains of looking after two stepchildren, and the lingering ghost of her own past betrayals, she finds that the life of a “second marryer” leaves much to be desired. As their friendship develops, so grows the shadow cast over her marriage, and when they make a late, illicit bay crossing on a ferryboat, the story gathers momentum under California's Mount Tamalpais. There, in the fabled Golden State, Sylvia Brownrigg shows how even a layman's Zen can lead to some important revelations about the need to look forward, not back. Bristling with honesty and wit, Morality Tale explores the triangular complications that can befall a modern marriage and the tragicomic forces that surround them.
Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction: four novels--Morality Tale, The Delivery Room, Pages for You, and The Metaphysical Touch--and a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World. Morality Tale was described in the New York Times as "divinely deadpan", and in the San Francisco Chronicle as a "witty parable of marriage." The Delivery Room won the Northern California Book Award for best novel.
Sylvia's works have been included in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times lists of notable fictions and have been translated into several languages, and she has also won a Lambda award for fiction. In addition to writing fiction, Sylvia Brownrigg has been widely published as a reviewer and critic for publications such as the New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement.
Sylvia grew up in California and in England, was educated at Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, and lived for many years in London. She now lives in Berkeley with her family.
