Gone to Soldiers

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Also by Marge Piercy

Novels

Going Down Fast
, 1969

Dance the Eagle to Sleep
, 1970

Small Changes
, 1973

Woman on the Edge of Time
, 1976

The High Cost of Living
, 1978

Vida
, 1980

Braided Lives
, 1982

Fly Away Home
, 1985

Gone to Soldiers
, 1988

Summer People
, 1989

He, She And It
, 1991

The Longings of Women
, 1994

City of Darkness, City of Light
, 1996

Storm Tide
, 1998 (with Ira Wood)

Three Women
, 1999

The Third Child
, 2003

Sex Wars
, 2005

Short Stories

“The Cost of Lunch, Etc.”, 2014

Poetry Collections

Breaking Camp
, 1968

Hard Loving
, 1969

4-Telling
(with Emmett Jarrett, Dick Lourie, Robert Hershon), 1971

To Be of Use
, 1973

Living in the Open
, 1976

The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing
, 1978

The Moon Is Always Female
, 1980

Circles on the Water, Selected Poems
, 1982

Stone, Paper, Knife
, 1983

My Mother's Body
, 1985

Available Light
, 1988

Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now
(ed.), 1988

Mars and Her Children
, 1992

Eight Chambers of the Heart,
1995 (UK)

What Are Big Girls Made Of
, 1997

Early Grrrl
, 1999

The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme
, 1999

Colors Passing Through Us
, 2003

The Crooked Inheritance,
2009

The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980–2010
, 2012

Made in Detroit
, 2015

Other Works

“The Grand Coolie Damn” in
Sisterhood Is Powerful
, 1970 (pamphlet)

The Last White Class
, (play coauthored with Ira Wood), 1979

Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt
, (essays), 1982

The Earth Shines Secretly: A Book of Days
, (daybook calendar), 1990

So You Want to Write: How to Master the Craft of Writing Personal Narrative
, 2001; Enlarged Edition, 2005

Sleeping with Cats
, (memoir), 2002

Louder: We Can't Hear You (Yet!), The Political Poems of Marge Piercy,
2004 (CD)

Pesach for the Rest of Us,
2007

My Life, My Body (Outspoken Authors)
, (essays, poems, and memoir), 2015

Gone to Soldiers

A Novel

Marge Piercy

The survivors have written their own books

and those who perished are too many and too hungry

for this to do more than add a pebble to the cairn

So this is for my grandmother Hannah

who was a solace to my childhood

and who was a storyteller even in the English

that never fit comfortably in her mouth

for the moment when she learned that of her

village, none and nothing remained

for her weak eyes, strong stomach and the tales

she told, her love of gossip, of legend

her incurable romantic heart

her gift for making the past

walk through the present

CONTENTS

LOUISE 1:
A Talent for Romance

DANIEL 1:
An Old China Hand

JACQUELINE 1:
In Pursuit of the Adolescent Universal

ABRA 1:
The Opening of Abra

NAOMI 1:
Naomi/Nadine Is Only Half

BERNICE 1:
Bernice and the Pirates

JEFF 1:
Emplumado

RUTHIE 1:
Ruthie's Saturday

One Cold Sunday

JACQUELINE 2:
Of Chilblains and Rotten Rutabagas

RUTHIE 2:
Of Rapid Pledges

ABRA 2:
Stories to Make the Ears Bleed

BERNICE 2:
Bernice on Patrol

DUVEY 1:
Many a Stormy Sea Will Blow

LOUISE 2:
The Dark Horse

NAOMI 2:
Today You Are a Woman

DANIEL 2:
The Great Purple Crossword Puzzle

JEFF 2:
The Creature from the Logey Swamp

JACQUELINE 3:
A Star Shaped Like Pain

ABRA 3:
Such a Roomy Closet

NAOMI 3:
The Jaws Close

LOUISE 3:
Afternoon Sun

JEFF 3:
High Tea and Low Tricks

DUVEY 2:
The Maltese Crossing

RUTHIE 3:
Of Good Girls and Bad Girls

BERNICE 3:
Bird on a Wire

MURRAY 1:
One More River to Cross

DANIEL 3:
Daniel's War

JACQUELINE 4:
Roads of Paper

JEFF 4:
A Few Early Deaths

ABRA 4:
Hands-on Experience

NAOMI 4:
Home Is the Sailor

LOUISE 4:
Something Old and Something New

JACQUELINE 5:
Of Common Wives and Thoroughbred Horses

DANIEL 4:
Their Mail and Ours

DUVEY 3:
The Black Pit

RUTHIE 4:
Everybody Needs Somebody to Hate

BERNICE 4:
Up, Up and Away

ABRA 5:
What Women Want

LOUISE 5:
Of the Essential and the Tangential

JEFF 5:
Friends Best Know How to Wound

NAOMI 5:
One Hot Week

JACQUELINE 6:
Catch a Falling Star

RUTHIE 5:
Candles Burn Out

BERNICE 5:
The Crooked Desires of the Heart Fulfilled

LOUISE 6:
The End of a Condition Requiring Illusions

ABRA 6:
Love's Labor

DANIEL 5:
Working in Darkness

MURRAY 2:
A Little Miscalculation of the Tides

JEFF 6:
A Leader of Men and a Would-be Leader of Women

NAOMI 6:
A Few Words in the Mother Tongue

RUTHIE 6:
What Is Given and What Is Taken Away

LOUISE 7:
Toward a True Appreciation of Chinese Food

JACQUELINE 7:
The Chosen

BERNICE 6:
In Pursuit

ABRA 7:
The Loudest Rain

DANIEL 6:
Under the Weeping Willow Tree

JEFF 7:
When the Postman Passes at Noon, Twice

NAOMI 7:
The Tear in Things

JACQUELINE 8:
Spring Mud, Spring Blood

RUTHIE 7:
Woman Is Born into Trouble as the Water Flows Downward

BERNICE 7:
Major Mischief

LOUISE 8:
I Could Not Love Thee, Dear, So Much

ABRA 8:
The Great Crusade

JEFF 8:
The Die Is Cast

RUTHIE 8:
Almost Mishpocheh

MURRAY 3:
Return to Civilization

JACQUELINE 9:
An Honorable Death

LOUISE 9:
Rations in Kind

NAOMI 8:
The Voice of the Turtledove

DANIEL 7:
Flutterings

JACQUELINE 10:
Up on Black Mountain

BERNICE 8:
Of the One and the Many

LOUISE 10:
The Biggest Party of the Season

ABRA 9:
The Grey Lady

RUTHIE 9:
Some Photo Opportunities and a Goose