Blue In Chicago

Blue in Chicago collects together the sharp, bittersweet stories of Bette Howland and restores to our libraries an extraordinarily gifted writer who was recognised as a major talent before all but disappearing from public view for decades, until nearly the end of her life.

Bette Howland was an outsider: an intellectual from a working-class neighbourhood in Chicago, a divorcée and single mother, to the disapproval of her family, an artist chipped away at by poverty and perfection. Each of these sides of her life plays a shaping role in her work. Mining her most precarious struggles for her art in each of these stories, she chronicles the fears and hopes of her generation.

Blue in Chicago: And Other Stories introduces UK listeners to a wry, brilliant observer and a writer of great empathy and sly, joyous humour.

Published in the US under the title Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.

Contents:
- A Visit
- Blue in Chicago
- To the Country
- Twenty-Sixth and California
- Public Facilities
- Golden Age
- How We Got the Old Woman to Go
- Aronesti
- Power Failure
- German Lessons
- Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage