Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice is comprised of five stories, each of which features a female protagonist at a crossroads in her life. Each of these women pursues a quest for personal fulfillment in the face of her shifting familial and emotional landscape. The stories deal primarily with domestic issues, such as childbearing, marital relationships, aging parents and personal faith. Though each woman feels alone in her individual incidence of alienation and loss, the stories imply the universality of each of these life-altering situations. All of the stories are set in modern-day Virginia; four are contemporary, and one, Fire, spans the decade between 1963 and 1973. The flux of societal conventions and moral codes in the Upper New South alternately guides and complicates the lives of these five women. An emphasis on craft in Fire and Ice includes the consideration of narrative structure, thematic unity, and voice. The thesis itself is a story cycle united by setting and theme; each story within represents a specific conflict encountered by a protagonist in a different place in her life cycle. The internal structure of four of the stories is traditional and linear. The fifth, Fire, is an example of the modular form that has long been an area of intense academic interest for the author. Thematically, all of the stories are told against a backdrop of the emotional landscapes of burning and freezing, whether from love, stability, fulfillment, or the lack thereof. The quest of each of these women is to find her way to a more temperate emotional climate. In terms of voice, Fire and lce strives to achieve a true and believable, and regionally-flavored voice for each narrator.