Published in 2020
260 pages
Barbara Miller Biles is a Calgary writer. She attended the University of Alberta and taught primary school until her own daughter and son were born. She explored fiction writing in extension courses and local writing groups. Her short fiction has appeared in Canada, the US, the UK, and Sweden, in various literary magazines including, FreeFall, The Nashwaak Review, The Antigonish Review, The Windsor Review, The Broken City, Turk’s Head Review, Femmuary and others.
What is this book about?
Dear Hearts is a collection of character-driven stories that are whimsical, sometimes magical, unsentimental yet poignant, and focus on the ways in which girls and women who were teenagers in the 1960s experienced the changing cultural values shaped by feminism. Many of them are about the experiences of young women in high school and university, and explore their response to changing sexual mores. The characters are hearts of longing caught in the irony of the times, transitioning from the sixties right up to the present. Stories are presented in five parts: Tender Hearts, Geneva Stories, Surreal Hearts, Janet Stories and Sorry Hearts and reveal characters with a sense of longing and poignancy yet strength and quirkiness, too.
