Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Stories (LOA #136)
At Fault / Bayou Folk / A Night in Acadie / The Awakening / uncollected stories
From ruined Louisiana plantations to bustling, cosmopolitan New Orleans, Kate Chopin wrote with unflinching honesty about propriety and its strictures, the illusions of love and the realities of marriage, and the persistence of a past scarred by slavery and war. Her stories of fiercely independent women challenged contemporary mores as much by their sensuousness as their politics, and today seem decades ahead of their time. Now, The Library of America collects all of Chopin’s novels and stories as never before in one authoritative volume.
The explosive novel At Fault (1890) centers on a love triangle between a strong-willed young widow, a stiff St. Louis businessman, and the man’s alcoholic wife. In the two story collections Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), Chopin transforms the…