‘Edith Sloan returns to her beloved bookstore on Harvard Square
and establishes a press for publishing poetry.’
– The Hedgerow
The Hedgerow by Anne Leigh Parrish published July 9th with Unsolicited Press and has been described as ‘an elegant, character-driven novel of paradoxes, revealing universal human truths‘. It is the sequel to An Open Door (October 2022), a book that Kirkus Review stated was ‘an adroit, dry-witted tale about a strong-willed woman trying to live her life.’
The Hedgerow can be read as a standalone and I am delighted to bring you all an extract today with further details, including the always important purchase link.
[ About The Hedgerow ]
It’s 1949, the freedom granted women by the Second World War is over, and stifling social conventions are once more at play. Edith Sloan, the rebellious, well-educated heroine of An Open Door returns in The Hedgerow to pursue her dreams of owning a thriving bookstore on Harvard Square and establishing a poetry press to publish the silent and underserved.
Free of her dreary marriage to Walter, she receives a proposal from Henry, a wealthy British peer and the man who made the purchase of her bookstore possible. When she accepts, is it from love or gratitude? Will being his wife help or hinder her plans? Edith soon finds herself at the intersection of free expression and censorship. Duty competes with desire, while serious endeavors are undermined by trivial pursuits.
As she tries to balance the competing demands in her life, troubling facts from Henry’s past come to light. Edith also discovers that being a pioneer in publishing comes with consequences she hadn’t foreseen. The decade draws to a close and delivers one more surprise Edith must summon extraordinary courage to face.
The Hedgerow – Purchase Link
[ Extract ]
Edith didn’t have to read the return address to know the letter was from Walter. They’d been coming all summer, always on a Wednesday. The first paragraph would be about his law job and the cases he was assigned. The second paragraph would talk about his parents, or his sister, Kathleen, and the wild things she and her new husband were up to. Sometimes he wrote about someone he had lunch with, or a problem with his apartment the landlord was neglecting to address. The third would touch on current affairs, now all about the Koreans and the trouble they were stirring up. He’d close with All Best, as if they never married, never cared for each other, and never made a single plan together. Sometimes, when her heart softened, she thought he might sense how she’d fallen apart after moving out of their apartment. He could be trying to bolster her spirit with a cheery, neutral tone, as if to say, “I understand, you’ll be fine, I’m fine, too.” But usually, she thought not.
She took the letter from the silver tray in the hall where Henry’s butler, Alistair, had left it, and went into her room. The door that connected it to Henry’s was closed, but not locked. There was something about having her own bed that was deliciously freeing. Henry was a good man, and a good lover, but she didn’t like lying next to him all night. She thought it was civilized, this arrangement of separate yet connected bedrooms. His wife, Mary, had had her own room down the hall, one with no shared access. She wanted it that way. She had gone back to England last winter. Henry had asked her several times for a divorce since then, and she refused. It just didn’t make sense. Two months before she left, she had an abortion. The pregnancy was kept secret from him, but she confessed it to Edith. It seemed that when a woman didn’t want a man’s baby, or the man himself, she should be willing to set him free unless her pride stood in the way, or fear of being a divorced woman, though now, in 1949, it was more accepted.
Far less accepted was an unmarried man and woman living together, though neither Henry nor Edith worried too much about that when he invited her to move in. She accepted because when she left Walter she had nowhere to go. It was pleasant at Henry’s; she needed that comfort to heal and collect herself. Henry devoted himself to her, didn’t talk about the past or the future, and seemed glad to just drift along with her in tow. Then, just the other day, he told her to tell Walter that it was time to divorce.
“You need an orderly life, my dear, and waiting for him to free you is disorderly,” he said. They had just made love, and he was slipping on his robe to return to his room. The clock by the bed ticked quietly. Outside, Cambridge and the whole of Boston were asleep, pressed down by gentle, inky darkness. Henry stayed longer than usual, lying awake beside her. Sometimes, she tried to time her breathing to his, willing her rhythm to match his, but it never did.
You can read the full first chapter at: The Hedgerow – Chapter One – Anne Leigh Parrish Writer
[ Bio ]
Anne Leigh Parrish is the author of thirteen previously published books, including the novel A Summer Morning (October 2023) and poetry collection If The Sky Won’t Have Me (April 2023). Anne’s fourteenth, The Hedgerow (July 2024), is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. She lives with her family amongst the evergreen trees in Olympia, Washington.
Website: https://anneleighparrish.com/
X ~ @AnneLParrish
