Handsome Heroines

Intrigued since girlhood by the tale ""of a blacksmith's daughter who married a reckless young king, then dressed herself as a man to rescue him from a wicked princess"" Shahrukh Husain, a practicing psychotherapist, spent years searching for more such stories in folk and fairytale collections and from storytellers. Handsome Heroines: Women as Men in Folklore is the culmination of her quest. She says that in these stories, ""women who dressed as men therefore expressed a valid female fantasy--breaking away from the bondage of gender. For a woman, putting away her female garb was as much about putting away the persona that came with it."" (Anchor, $12.95 ISBN 0-385-48405-4)