No More Frogs, No More Princes: Women Making Creative Choices in Midlife

This collection of autobiographical tidbits easily meets its goal of presenting different voices of women between the ages of 40 and 60 who have had what the authors call a ``midlife reckoning experience,'' but additional background information could have made the material more cohesive. These stories were culled from interviews conducted by Vickers (a professor of English and women's studies at Ohio Dominican College) and Thomas (a family and child therapist). Many of these narratives are poignant: a 45-year-old without a high school diploma has just left her abusive husband; a graduate student in preventive medicine shows how her father's belief that ``Good Italian girls didn't make decisions'' kept her from maturing; a labor lawyer describes working in a San Francisco sweatshop as an 11-year-old and admits that ``my association with being a girl and a child is with being a slave.'' There are joyous affirmations too. A 57-year-old has realized her dream of owning an inn in southern Ohio before dying of cancer; a potter is exploring the Cherokee heritage that she was barred from as a child; a 60-year-old recalls her transformation from housewife to local politician to teacher and art consultant. (Oct.)