The Bedquilt and Other Stories

War, greed, love, women's rights, marital discord and race relations are prominent themes in the unaffectedly realist stories of Fisher (1879-1958), once a bestselling novelist (The Brimming Cup, etc.). The 11 stories and two essays reprinted here (all but one from a long out-of-print 1956 anthology) resonate with contemporary relevance. In the title story, an elderly New England spinster, invisible in her brother's home, finally receives recognition for her housework by exhibiting at a county fair the magnificent quilt she spent five years making. In ``Through Pity and Terror...,'' Fisher, who founded a hospital for refugee children in France during WWI, draws on firsthand experience to describe a young mother's struggle to survive as German soldiers ransack her home and her husband's pharmacy. Abhorrence of war also permeates ``The Knot-hole,'' a powerful WWII tale evoking the ordeal of Allied POWs confined for months in a German boxcar. Stories of rural residents of Vermont (the Kansas-born writer's adopted state) probe the depths of feeling beneath their sardonic, laconic exteriors; the same fierce independence animates the Basque folk of the stories based on Fisher's years spent living in southwestern France. In ``An American Citizen'' (1920), an African American elevator operator finds dignity and equal treatment only by moving to France. Though at times sentimental and didactic, Fisher's stories are nevertheless engaging and still timely. (Jan.)