“I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn’t give myself.” So said Edna Pontellier to her friend one summer as they sat beside the sea. It was the summer she learned to swim, fell in love, and awoke to the reality of her empty role in a loveless marriage. But she was a good wife. Edna dutifully returned home to the prison of her well-ordered life in New Orleans. Although close friends offered advice, the search for herself was a journey she must make alone. And in the end, Edna found herself returning to the sea where it all began.
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Kate Chopin (1851–1904) was born in St. Louis. After marrying, she moved to Louisiana, where she raised six children. Chopin earned acclaim for her finely crafted short stories about the Creole and Cajun people of Louisiana. But her novel, The Awakening, was condemned for its controversial themes, which foreshadowed later feminist literature.
James Oliver Curwood (1878–1927) was born in Owosso, Michigan, where he lived for most of his life. He studied journalism at the University of Michigan, and in 1900 he left the university and married Cora Leon Johnson. This was also the year he sold his first story, “Across the Range,” for five dollars. He went to work for the Detroit News-Tribune covering funerals and for a pharmaceutical company until he was able to support himself through his writing. In 1909 Curwood divorced Cora and married Ethel Greenwood. That was also the year he took his first trip into the Canadian Northwest and thereafter would spend up to six months each year in the arctic wilderness. This was where he set some of his most successful books. Over his lifetime, Curwood wrote over thirty books. Among them were The Grizzly King, The Wolf Hunters, The Alaskan, The Country Beyond, and Son of the Forests.