Women who care and bear the burdens

By: By Tracy V. Wilson | JOURNAL BOOK REVIEWER
Published: October 05, 2008

THE NIGHTINGALES OF TROY. By Alice Fulton. Norton. 256 pages. $23.95.

Mamie Flynn Garrahan, a mother living in the early 1900s, has earned the nickname Mamie Come Running. If anybody needs help, Mamie is sure to arrive. At 26, she's preparing for the birth of her fifth child. In a more discreet way, she's also preparing for death, hoping her slow decline from a wasting disease doesn't stop her from delivering a healthy baby.

Mamie's story, the first in a collection of 10, introduces the other women of the Garrahan family. Mamie's mother and her four daughters, Edna, Charlotte, Dorothy and Annie, take leading roles in the later stories, as does Annie's daughter, Ruth.

Mamie's descendants are also women who come running. Annie is a nurse who cares for the residents of a Troy, N.Y., hotel during the Great Depression. Even though she knows the consequences of practicing medicine without a license, she's unable to turn away from people who need her. Grown-up Edna looks after her sister Dorothy, who is mentally ill. Ruth, against her better judgment, plays host to a wayward graduate student. Later, she goes on a quest to find a bottle of Annie's favorite perfume, long reformulated and repackaged, in the hope that it will stimulate her mother's fading memory.

In piecemeal fashion, these stories relate the history of the Garrahan women and the town of Troy through the progression of the 20th century. The events in each one happen about 10 years apart, and the overall effect is like a series of family snapshots taken from different angles. Read as a whole, they give a richer glimpse into the world of the Garrahans than a linear novel might have.

The collection reflects Fulton's skill as a poet. The language is precise and evocative without becoming purple or flowery. The stories are equally well crafted, playing off and enhancing the meaning of one another. People and places resurface from story to story, but in such a clever, understated manner that the references never seem contrived.

The collection also comes full circle, beginning and ending in the world of medicine and mortality. Mamie turns to over-the-counter heroin and folk cures made from opium poppies; Annie waits for an MRI. But in spite of their focus on illness and death, many of the tales are bravely optimistic. They remain hopeful without ignoring the realities of loneliness and loss.

■ Tracy Wilson is a reviewer who lives in Atlanta.