Böcker av Merrill Joan Gerber

These powerful essays share critical moments of a writer's life: scenes from sixty years of passionate married love; suicides faced and suicide contemplated; trauma at the DMV; a night lost searching for a harpsichord in the mountains of Florence, Italy; the tale of a beloved cousin whose plane is shot down by Japanese Zeros; and a precious friendship between two women writers derailed by the poisons of religion and politics. In the titular essay (included in Best American Essays 2023) a food bank, assuaging the pandemic's terrors with gifts of food and prayers, becomes a portal for intimate confidences entrusted to us by a voice of unspoiled authenticity and perennial vigor.

Glimmering Girls tells the story of three extraordinary American women during a time of sexual and cultural repression. Doing the unthinkable, the three move off campus to live in a house with three men. There the young women's rebellion against expectations deepens, and they begin the real-world education of pursuing their dreams.

This is the tale of a woman who readily admits her fear of travel, a fear that many experience but are embarrassed to admit. When finally she plunges into the new adventure, she describes her experiences in Florence with wit, humour and energy.

Merrill Joan Gerber opens to us her life as a writer. She reveals the truths and inventions of a writer's vision and the use of life as the raw material of art. Her personal essays range widely, from the mysteries of love and marriage to painful encounters with suicides and family deaths.