The Leap (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Louise Erdrich
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Plot: Autobiographical
- Time of Work: The late twentieth century
- Setting: New Hampshire
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Anna
- Genres: Short fiction, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Blindness or blind persons, New England, Pregnancy, Death or dying, Reading, Heroes or heroism, Fire, Entertaining or entertainers, Circuses or carnivals, Lightning
- Locales: New Hampshire
The Story
The narrator's mother, the surviving half of a blindfold trapeze act, has lost her sight to cataracts. She navigates her home so gracefully, never upsetting anything or losing her balance, that the narrator realizes that the catlike precision of her movements may be the product of her early training. The narrator rarely thinks about her mother's career in the Flying Avalons, however, because her mother preserves no keepsakes from that period of her life.
The narrator owes her mother her own existence three times. The first occurred well before she was born,...
[The entire page is 1669 words long]
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See Also:
Louise Erdrich (Cyclopedia of World Authors)Louise Erdrich (Poetry)Louise Erdrich (Short Fiction)Louise Erdrich (Dictionary of World Biography)Louise Erdrich (Long Fiction)Louise Erdrich (American Indians)Louise Erdrich (Identities and Issues)Theory of Short Fiction (Topical Overview--Short Fiction)