One Small Saga

Originally published by Coffee House Press in 1984, One Small Saga is one of Bobbie Louise Hawkins’ most personal and haunting autobiographical novels.

[Original jacket copy:] “In the early 1950s, a young Albuquerque bride accompanies her husband back to his family home in Denmark, then to London and the British colonies of Jamaica and British Honduras [now Belize]. The narrator endures the company of both pathetic and incorrigible characters while struggling to reconcile her idealization of The Modern Marriage with the painful reality of life with a philandering husband. Through the widening eyes of her protagonist, who develops into a woman of depth and vision, Ms. Hawkins creates characters who must adjust to the demands of others and of circumstances. Some relinquish the ability to communicate with others. For a few, adjustment means learning how to communicate with grace and tolerance. Told with humor, compassion, and just a hint of sarcasm, One Small Saga ultimately becomes a story of human compromise and adaptation to the quiet disasters of an ordinary life.”

This revival edition includes a new introduction by Laird Hunt and Eleni Sikelianos, and an interview with the author about the writing of One Small Saga conducted in 2011 by Barbara Henning.

The edition also makes available Hawkins’ long-out-of-print short story “En Route” (a 1982 chapbook from Little Dinosaur Press), another travel narrative—this time in Central America—that bears witness to scenes of intimate tyranny.

The publication of this book was made possible, in part, by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.