Originally from Nashville, TN, Carolyn Osborn moved to Texas when she was twelve. A former newspaper reporter, radio writer, and English teacher at the University of Texas at Austin. Best known for her short stories, she is also an essay writer. Her work appears in many literary magazines. Three of her short story collections have been published: A Horse of Another Color, The Fields of Memory, and Warriors and Maidens. The Book Club of Texas chose to publish a limited edition of one story, The Grands, as the first book in its New Texas Fiction series. She has served as president of the Texas Institute of Letters and was one of the founders of the Texas Book Festival. Her stories have been awarded prizes by P.E.N., the Texas Institute of Letters, and one was selected for the O. Henry Awards. In 2003 she was given the Antioch Review’s Distinguished Prose Award. She lives and writes in Austin. Uncertain Ground is her first novel.

To be publlished May 1, 2010.

Uncertain Ground

Set in 1953, this is a story of a period of uncertainty for twenty-year-old Celia Henderson while visiting relatives in Galveston, a city built on a barrier island with its own history of instability and survival. In the pre-reform Galveston of the 1950s, during its good-old, bad-old days, Celia faces a series of conflicts: old south vs. old west, typified by a wild cowboy cousin, Emmett Chandler, and fifties’ prejudices, most apparent against homosexuals and Mexican-Americans. The man who exemplifies both is an artist she meets on the island. She must also deal with fifties sexual mores, especially the double standard, inherent in her attraction to an unhappy law student. The innocence of the fifties is interwoven with the problems of that time and the present. Celia gradually learns to accept her own fears, those of others, and life’s continual uncertainty.

The Grands
Woodcut Illustration by
Barbara Whitehead

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Wings Press
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