Amanda S Secret Wish

Drama recounting the experience of growing up in the Deep South

At the heart of Ellen Gilchrist’s novel is the incorrigible Amanda McCamey. Leaving a troubled past behind, she marries into New Orleans’ high society but finds the privileged world stifling and unsatisfying. Seeking a quieter, more meaningful life, she divorces and moves to the Ozarks where she translates poetry and surrounds herself with artists and intellectuals. Her friend Katie, a brilliant sculptor, brings out the wild child in Amanda, but it is Will, an intense young musician, who captivates her. What begins as a sexual tryst quickly becomes a grand and impossible passion that mirrors the life of the eighteenth-century French poet whose work Amanda is translating. But her new life is interrupted when her past comes back to haunt her. With beauty, humor, and luminescent prose, Gilchrist paints an evocative portrait of a woman finally coming into her own. Praise: "Gilchrist's accomplished first novel is absorbing, rich, and evocative as she explores the heart and mind of a woman who has the courage to risk traveling an unconventional path in an effort to find the way to herself." —Publishers Weekly "Women’s fiction par excellence … Amanda is in some ways a receptacle for current romantic clichés, but she is also a vivid character or dash and humor [who] has at last made her way to autonomy." —Harper's Magazine "A fast-paced, often funny and touching novel." —Library Journal "Both stylish and idiomatic—a rare and potent combination." —Times Literary Supplement

A beautiful clothbound edition of a beloved classic to celebrate the 100th birthday of America's greatest playwright, with a sweeping new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner.

Amanda Childs, Mainville attorney and organist at St. Catherine's Episcopal Church, was happy. Exonerated of charges of federal criminal conspiracy, embezzlement and money laundering, she has just become engaged to Jon Connor, the FBI agent who was investigating the case. Her friend and law partner Ralph Carmichael is getting married. However, just as things seem to be going so well, she is felled with the news that William Barnes, Sr., the head of the conspiracy that took the life of her husband Andrew and almost cost hers as well, is fighting the charges, and intends as his defense to again pin the blame upon her. She renounces her engagement, despite Jon's protests, to keep Connor's integrity intact. She informs him that his credibility on the stand would be tainted if the jury is informed he is dating and engaged to the former prime suspect in the case. She painfully resolves, for the sake of Andy's memory, that nothing will hinder the prosecution and conviction of Barnes. In the meantime an old childhood friend faces charges that he murdered his wife. Amanda steps in to defend her friend, and in so doing is thrown in constant close proximity with another lifelong friend. The contact resurrects old memories and repressed feelings between them. While still reeling about the revelations of her own paternity, Amanda suddenly learns that her deceased husband Andrew's past is shrouded in mystery. All her past doubts about Andrew's love for her are revisited, when it is learned that he kept certain personal matters secret from her. In the meantime she is being shadowed, and is accosted by a newspaper reporter about to leak the story of Andrew's famous father. Just as Amanda seemingly sees light at the end of the tunnel and makes crucial decisions regarding her future happiness, she is mired in suspicion of murder. The evidence clearly points to her as the perpetrator. Her liberty and very life become in jeopardy, and she must rely upon others to try to save her from impending doom.

Now available as a paperbook, Volume VIII adds to the series' four full-length plays written and produced during the last decade of Williams' life.