In the two powerful novels collected here, Morris offers compassionate accounts of damaged and desperate people struggling to survive. The Lost Mother: Told from the perspective of twelve-year-old Thomas, The Lost Mother follows a shattered family in rural Vermont during the Great Depression. Deserted by their mother, Thomas and his eight-year-old sister, Margaret, are reduced to living in a tent with their father, Henry. When a wealthy neighbor begins to woo the children as companions for her strange, housebound son, Henry weighs an unexpected proposition, the consequences of which may cost him everything. A Dangerous Woman: Named one of the five best novels of the year by Time magazine emotionally unstable Martha Hogan is an outcast in her small Vermont town. She stares; she has violent crushes on people; and perhaps most unsettling, she cannot stop telling the truth. After a traumatic experience in her teens, the thirty-two-year-old now craves love and companionship. But her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her, including her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian, and a seductive man who preys on her desires. Bitter and distrusting, Martha is slowly propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her life

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