ON THE OCCASION OF MY LAST AFTERNOON

On the occasion of one of her last afternoons, Emma Tate remembers the dark days of her childhood on Seven Oaks Plantation. The Civil War looms. Her wrathful father manipulates his family and plantation with greed and brutality. Marriage to Doctor Quincy Lowell from Massachusetts liberates Emma from the role of the Southern belle. She becomes her husband's partner in the struggle against the war's destruction of bodies and minds. Sally Darling delivers complicated sentences with grace and meaning. Her softly inflected reading conveys age and gentility, anger and love. With Darling, the listener follows this strong woman filled with wistful regret through the ages of her life, as seen in the mirror of her memory. L.R.S. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 99]