The Practical Heart: Four Novellas

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [xiv], 322. Quarter-bound black cloth over tan paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to spine; deckled fore-edges. Jacket design by Chip Kidd.

Title novella in which Muriel Fraser, a poor Scottish-born spinster, is the subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait in the imagination of her devoted grand-nephew, won the Nation Magazine Prize. It was first published separately in 1993 by the North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, after originally appearing in Harper's Magazine. Preservation News appeared in Conjunctions and in Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust. It was subsequently reprinted in Best American Gay Fiction, (Little, Brown, and Co., 1998). While He's One, Too, commissioned by Patrick Merla for his 1996 anthology, Boys Like Us, was later published in Granta.

From the author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1989). "[A] storyteller in the grand tradition." –New York Times