Part One: Music in Purple Time |
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| Chapter | Synopsis | |
| One | My Wisconsin | On a lecture trip to the Baraboo campus Annis horrifies local faculty and inadvertently inaugurates a western two step evening |
| Two | Winter of the Commuting Professor | At ten below zero she adventures out onto frozen Lake Mendota |
| Three | Wrong Way to Indianapolis | After the pilots jump out of the window and run away over the tarmac in Minneapolis, Annis and the other passengers are “sterilized” |
| Four | Music in Purple Time | Visiting her older daughter to buy her a wedding dress, Annis tries to reconcile “the big apple” to the grim wartime city of her childhood |
| Five | Letters of Protest | A train trip over the Cumberland Gap to DC brings Annis to her younger daughter’s new pad as well as a quirky tour of The National Museum of Women in the Arts and the National Archives |
| Six | Ages of Women | Finding herself suddenly popular on the campus of her youth, Annis also finds her 19 year old self clamoring to be taken back to Michigan |
| Seven | The Quest for the Great Happiness | Annis and Henry travel to London where she finds herself accepted into the sisterhood of English over-fifties |
| Eight | Menopause, or, Suffering from Spiritual Growth | The change of life changes Annis’ view of life sufficiently for her to throw her full professorship out the window to take early retirement) illustrations by author (previously published, click here to read) |
Part Two: Dancing With Elephants |
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| Chapter | Synopsis | |
| Nine | Affairs with Bears | Lecturing on the bear archetype in Toronto, Annis discovers that her Canadian audience wants to compare the relative merits of actual intercourse with different bears. |
| Ten | Virginia Woolf in New Haven | Annis has a surprise encounter with a fan of her own among the Woolf fans, and has a heart warming encounter with a long lost cousin surprisingly like herself, and full of family secrets |
| Eleven | Dancing With Elephants | Annis bombs out giving a poetry recital at a panel on humor in Chicago |
| Twelve | My New York, in Light and Shadow | Having found a pied a terre in a West Side brownstone, Annis rediscovers her New York identity during adventures from SoHo to Central Park |
Part Three: Between Two Worlds |
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| Chapter | Synopsis | |
| Thirteen | In The Hall of The Universe | Trying to start her life again after Henry’s death, Annis returns to New York City at Christmas time. |
| Fourteen | Between Two Worlds | With air flights canceled after 9/11, Annis takes off by train, first to Denver to greet her granddaughter’s entrance into the world and then back to Detroit to welcome a 7 year old grandson adopted from Ukraine |
The manuscript is complete, at 344 pages