An Open Door
A novel by Anne Leigh Parrish | Unsolicited Press Oct. 2022
It’s 1948 and the freedom granted women by the Second World War is gone. Edith Sloan, earning her doctorate, is told by her law student husband to cancel her academic plans. His bright future requires a certain kind of wife: one in the kitchen making dinner for important guests. Frustrated and defiant, Edith leaves him but returns when his begging letters become too much. Trapped by marriage and her husband’s ambition, Edith struggles to find her footing and the means to her own survival.
Praise for An Open Door
Anne Leigh Parrish’s an open door lets readers step back into an America trapped between World War II and the impending sexual revolution, a world whose turbulent desires lurk just below a veneer of specious innocence. Edith Sloan, married to a man who fails to appreciate either her poetic instincts or romantic longings, throws herself into management of a bookshop—but finds herself drawn toward infidelity and independence. With Parrish’s trademark gift for emotional nuance and the subtleties of social engagement, she once again stuns with a novel that is moving, inspiring and deeply authentic to both the sensibilities of its age and the mystery of the human experience. —Jacob M. Appel, author of Millard Salter’s Last Day